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 first day of con season.
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 find myself giving up on the idea of single issues. I understand you all push towards runs of comics. I was raised on comics and for the last 15 years I’ve grown up loving comic book characters. As time goes on I’ve lost faith in the idea that characters can go on forever because when it comes down to it all you need is one terrible story to ruin your favorite hero for the next five years. The key heroes that were ruined for me were Hal Jordan, Vision, and Hawkeye. With so many burns by DC and Marvel I tend to stay in the indie realm of comics and even manga where you get an all inclusive story with a beginning and end told by usually the people who create the character. If I ever do go back to issues it’s usually for small runs or mini series.
Which brings me to my two questions. Does it bother you to still pick up issues just to finish a run even if the person who ends up writing the story is terrible at it? What do you feel are the biggest mistakes DC and Marvel have made with your favorite characters?
Bryan from Cleveland, OH
First of all, if you’re still holding a grudge about Hal Jordan, you might want to check out what’s going on now, because Geoff Johns has been revitalizing that character for a good long while, and his current character health and status is as strong as I’ve ever seen it. Sure they blew it with Hal Jordan a while back, but that was at least a decade ago. Sometimes you gotta let that stuff go. Bendis killed off Clint Barton a good many years ago, but in all honesty, it seems like there’s a long run up to the redemption of the character, and in a world without Steve Rogers, it sorely needs Clint Barton. But that story has yet to resolve itself it seems. If anything, people always hate change when it happens, but later in retrospect, it is sometimes necessary. And while the idea of comic book death is a bit of a joke, it is important that there be stakes, at least in the short term. I was a huge Vision fan, and I’m not even sure what actually happened to him. That being said, the Young Avengers version of Vision does a pretty good job of sticking to the root of what made him interesting, while exploring new ground. But obviously, that’s up to you. I do think it’s important not to hold grudges against a company for things that happened long ago, under different management and creative teams. Of course, that’s not so much the case with Marvel, but it is certainly the case with DC and Hal Jordan in particular.
As far as buying issues to finish a run, I don’t do it. When a book is bad, to me, there’s no reason to continue buying it to get to the ending of a story I don’t like in the first place. I’ll hang back, quit buying issues and wait for the next creative team if I want to go back. There is that drop of OCD in the blood of many comic readers forcing them to spend another 3, 6, 9, or 12 dollars to get to the end to fulfill some weird gene, but what’s the real point? What are you trying to achieve? It’s possible the story could turn around, and be great, and you’d miss it. So what? If you’re that worried about the continuity, wait for the story to finish, and if it’s any good, you’ll hear about it. If that’s the case, go get the issues, or get the eventual trade. I am all for cutting the cord early and often. There are too many good comics, and they’re getting too expensive to keep buying things out of habit, a point made far more elegantly by our own Sonia Harris.
Your second (possibly third really…) question about biggest mistakes, is a bit of a boondoggle, because in the hands of a capable writer, any mistake can become an opportunity, and something that seems like a mistake can actually turn into a great story down the road. For example, so many people maligned Spider-Man’s One More Day, but a year later, The Amazing Spider-Man is as enjoyable as it’s been in as long as I can remember. I have to wonder if Green Lantern would be going through this renaissance had he never been so sorely abused as a character in the 90’s. It’s hard to say. However, I think there are things you can classify as mistakes. “The Clone Saga” obviously springs right to mind as the utmost offender in recent memory, and lagging close behind is something like “Knightfall,” where Batman got broken and replaced by Jean-Paul Valley. But we got over it, and were treated to some great Batman comics in the early 2000’s. But, if you had to ask me about an ongoing, current problem that’s been going on for far too long, and on that I wish had never occurred, it would be Tony Stark. My current analysis is that the Iron Man running around the Marvel Universe right now is pretty well ruined. And even if you bring him back in some way, it will take a long time to wash off the crud from everything that he’s been part of for the last 3 years. Invincible Iron Man, on the other hand, is a favorite title of many. But in terms of his place in The Avengers and that world, it’s been forever changed, and I don’t think for the better. Still, the end of his story hasn’t been told, and maybe it’ll all work out. I certainly hope so, because I want to live in a world where Iron Man and Thor get along really well, and we’re not in that world at the moment.
Also, while I’m at it, I think we can all agree that Milla’s marriage to Daredevil isn’t going so well, and that slate needs clean wipin’ but good.
Josh Flanagan
I’m aware this subject might be slightly outdated at this point, but I thought it might be something interesting to debate. For the most part, I was disappointed with Secret Invasion. The point was brought up in your recent video show that one of the big problems was that there was no payoff in the Skrull reveal department. Hank Pym? Spider-Woman? Jarvis?!? I mean, c’mon here. Where was the big name, cliffhanging ending, “Ha-ha, I’m Iron Man and I’ve been a Skrull all along!’ holy shit! moment we were all hoping for? Anyway, here’s where my question comes in…
Would it have been better to make Spider-Man a Skrull?
Now, I have not read Spider-Man in quite some time (ahem… JMS) and I’m quite aware that people are really digging the book. But if Quesada and co. were so eager to get Spidey back to his care-free, web-slinging and single days, would this not have been a better alternative to having Peter Parker make a deal with the devil? If the ends justify the means, as it so clearly did with Marvel editorial, they could’ve eliminated the whole “oh, no, Aunt May is dying… again” plot line, and just make our beloved webhead have been a Skrull for the last 15-20 years. It not only eliminates the marriage, but the “Clone Saga” as well as the Civil War unmasking (which, by the way, why go through with if you’re just gonna backtrack on it less than a year later anyway? Sigh).
So, would having Peter’ve been a Skrull this whole time gone down better with the comics community any more than having a superhero whose whole life has been based around science shake hands with Mephisto? (Which, while I’m sure the book is very good now, still doesn’t sit well with me.) I don’t know if this has been brought up anywhere before, or if anyone even cares at this point, but I was thinking about it today and was curious to see what other people’s thoughts were.
Chris
There’s a few things at play here, at least as far as I see it. On one hand, you’ve got the general dissatisfaction over the lack of impact to the Skrull reveals in Secret Invasion, and I absolutely agree with you. I sat on the edge of my seat for the entire event, waiting for that one character to be revealed that would completely rock my world. We got teased with the question as to if it was Tony Stark, which seemed similar to how you’ve outlined how Spider-Man could have been a Skrull. Tony did a lot of questionable things that had people wondering just what the heck was going through his head, so it could have been very easy to make him a Skrull. But I think Bendis would have seen that as being almost too easy. I’m not sure I agree, or disagree, but I think that some major level character should have been revealed to be a Skrull to give the invasion weight. But that’s just me.
Now on the other hand, you’re tying in what happened to Spider-Man and Quesada’s mad determination to split him and Mary Jane up. I could see a scenario where he was replaced with a Skrull years ago and that could explain a lot of the weird things that JMS did (but could never fix that Gwen Stacy/Norman Osborn mess) as well as could have led to the split between Mary Jane and Peter. But the thing is, I don’t think it would have been accepted by the audience. With that Spider-Man problem Quesada created, there was no winning scenario, he was going to lose no matter what angle they took with it. If they made Spider-Man a Skrull, while that would have satisfied our desire to have an impactful Skrull reveal, you know we all would have screamed and called it a cheap stunt and complained about how it pissed on the past stories etc. I really do think that the Spider-Man thing became a lose-lose scenario and they just had to push through it, which they did and now we have some kick-butt Spider-Man comics to read because of it.
The one thing we love to do as comic fans is second guess the writers. I’ve been doing it for 20 years, hell I just did it this past week, and I’ve never written a comic book in my life, and yet I think I know what the recipe for success for writing these stories is. That’s both a great thing because its an avenue for our passion, but it’s also an annoying thing because a few dissatisfied voices can unite on the Internet and really breed negativity, which no one wants to see. Despite that, it’s always fun to say “What If…?” and I think that’s even why Marvel publishes those What If…? comics in the first place, so who knows, maybe someone will read this and do a story with the exact scenario you laid out! That would be pretty cool…
Ron Richards
With the recent announcement of a new Justice League #1, and yet another Black Panther #1, it makes me question just why the publishers need to re-number an ongoing book for no apparent reason. They did it with The Amazing Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Thor, but then those books went back to the original numbering. This is the third time for Justice League I believe, if this is an attempt by the publishers to justify the price increases, then it is transparent and lame. Renumbering and re-starting ongoing books to me is a cheap stunt that should be stopped because they are not fooling anyone.
Marc (K5blazer)
You’d be correct in saying that renumbering didn’t fool anyone except for the fact that it does. Despite what many people think, comic book companies don’t do things randomly or for no reason. There are usually clear business decisions behind what they do and renumbering is one of them.
There are two big reasons why books are always being relaunched and renumbered. The first is that sales absolutely increase with a new number one. People see a new book as a chance to jump on board on the ground floor and they turn out in bigger numbers. The other main reason for renumbering (which is related to the first reason) is that publishers see it as less daunting for new readers to jump on a book with a lower number. The mentality among many readers these days is that they have to know everything and they have to read everything, and when you have a book with a super high number the baggage associated with a book in the 500s might be too high.
Let’s take Thor as an example. Thor was relaunched last year to much fanfare with J. Michael Straczynski and Oliver Coipel. Marvel was betting that this new team would sell more books if there was a number one attached to the book rather than 86 or 503 or whatever it was up to at that point — and Marvel was probably right. A new number one is an event, it’s exciting, it’s the start of something new. The reader starts with a clean slate with a number one, they don’t have to feel like they missed out on anything.
The problem is, of course, that the excitement around a new number one is fleeting an eventually the buzz dies and Marvel has taken to countering that by triumphantly returning the book to the original numbering (as it is doing with Thor next week)! It’s a cheap gimmick that smacks of wanting to have your cake and eat it too.
And besides being a cheap gimmick it just underscores how silly it all is anyway. I used to care when they first started relaunching the “important” books but it’s been going on for over ten years now and at some point you just have to let it go. It’s just a number on the cover. If you’re only reading a book because of the sequential order of numbers in the upper left hand corner you probably shouldn’t be reading it anyway.
There are only two books left that would really bother me if they renumbered them — Action Comics and Detective Comics but that’s because the history of those books is so important to the medium. Everything else is fair game in my eyes. When they relaunch Ultimate Spider-Man after Ultimatum ends I will just has happily read every issue as I did before.
Conor Kilpatrick
Find us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
Subscribe to our RSS Feed
Some rights reserved.
But isn’t Thor coming out soon with #600? I would assume that’s the same kind of marketing ploy, suggesting some value to keeping the numbering going. Also, the new Justice League is a separate series, not a reboot with a new #1.
I’m OK with renumbering for the most part, especially if it’s for a ‘game changing’ kind of reason – the Brubaker/Cooke Catwoman springs to mind. However, I have to agree with Conor – if DC ever did renumber Action or Detective, I’d shed a tear.
On SI, I think Bendis did say somewhere – possibly Wordballoon – that the ‘big reveal’ in SI of a major character would have been too easy. Also, using second-tier characters would be a logical choice that an infiltrator would make – more people would notice Tony Stark acting strangely than they would Jarvis, for example. Not my opinion, just what I recall hearing from Bendis.
It both amuses and disturbs me how restarting a series with a new "Incredible First Issue!!!" works with consumers. I like big numbers that show a book’s been around and survived and was happy when Marvel began restoring the original numbering system to its old-line series. Now that Thor’s up to 600, perhaps the Brubaker boys – Cap and DD – can get the treatment soon.
@Rob: On the idea of how "big numbers…show a book’s been around and survived", this past week I read the introduction to the Crisis on Infinite Earths tpb, and Marv Wolfman says that DC shot down the idea of doing a Crisis mini-series in the ’70s for just this reason. Back in the ’70s , Wolfman writes, the understanding was that "first issues of comics…sold poorly. Readers were suspicious of comics with low numbers (as opposed to, say, ACTION COMICS…[whose issue numbers] indicated it had been around for a long time). Things changed, Wolfman says, because of the rise of comic shops and the direct market. In other words, once there was a mechanism for more specialized advertising and hype, it create an environment in which slews of #1 issues would sell.
Great questions this week.
Conor pointed it out perfectly. It will attract new readers not just to the book, but maybe also to comics in general. I don’t see why people even care if companies do that or not.
And I think we have at least another year or two before Tony Stark gets back on top. Hell, the next event from Marvel will probably bring him back as the world’s favorite sexy businessman/hero.
^Gah–in my above post there should be a closed quotation mark after "…long time)." That’s where Wolfman’s quote ends.
I don’t mind it when a company re-numbers their books. But what does bother me is when they try to go back to the original numbering so they can capatialize on a milestone issue like Thor #600.
oops, I meant ‘capitalize’. Damn typos
A better way to get people on board with a book is better advertise "jumping on" points- certain new story arcs, new creative teams, etc. Just avoid stunts like the "Hush" storyline, which then led into… what? Yes, DC sold a lot of books for a year, but what did they do with Batman after that? I don’t remember, not until Infinite Crisis and OYL took place. It almost felt like a "bait and switch" maneuver.
BTW, is Flash going back to #1 following Rebirth like GL did, or will it just pick up like nothing happened? Is Rebirth replacing the regular Flash comic for its run?
Always with the Mephisto.
I thought the unmasking was a waste of everyone’s time too until I realized it was setting up One More Day. Is that better or worse than making Peter a Skrull for twenty years?I don’t know. Would you have enjoyed the stories post-SI where Peter wandered around not knowing who the last two presidents were, and Mary Jane was emotionally violated because she remembered every moment of a marriage to an alien body snatcher? That doesn’t sound like a Spider-Man book that’s back on track to me. That sounds like a clusterfumble.
Look: as Josh rightly points out, the Clone Saga was a huge error. The whole reason for that blunder? Trying to undo the Spidey marriage. They have been trying to ditch that blunder since the honeymoon, and each attempt to have their cake and eat it too led to a bigger convolution. By the time they extricated themselves from the Clone mess, the only thing they could concoct to do it was resurrecting Norman Osborn, which was the actual worst thing to come out of Spider-Man in ages. And even that’s been working out okay for everybody lately.
Re: Renumbering – When I leaf through Previews, I automatically ignore any issue that isn’t a #1. So, it’s a marketing trick that certainly is effective in my case.
I’ve always established in my head that Clor and the Supervillain army was the cause of Ultron living inside Tony during Civil War especially since RIGHT after it ended, Ultron pops up out of Tony going "Brah-ha!" Kind of like how at the end of the Cadmus arc, Brainiac just pops out of Lex going "It was ME all along!" Just say it, Marvel. It’s an insanely easy thing to pull of. Just say and we can start liking Tony Stark like we used to.
Clor was such a bad idea. What was Millar thinking?
I think Josh’s problem with Iron Man was answered by Ron. Tony Stark could’ve been redeemed by being a skrull.
also, I can’t seem to understand your love for Amazing Spider-Man. It’s been 40 years and Peter Parker is an adult now, but he still acts like an adolescent. His marriage was the only thing that made him an adult. Now he just looks like a creepy manchild. I followed the series till the wierd time-space bending god arc. Does it get better after that?
I’ve read about a third maybe of Amazing Spider-Man since OMD through buying issues, reading others’ copies and only three issues I’ve really enjoyed: the Betty Brant story and the Shocker/subway train two parter. The other story I’ve read are kind of bland in my opinion. But yeah, I also have the problem of Peter acting like he’s 22 when I know he’s closer to 30, marriage or not.
As a 30 year old who lives and acts as if I was 22 myself it’s not that hard to understand. It’s quite common in NYC.
Renumbering Thor #1 last year made sense because Thor has been gone for awhile and his history is kind of muddled over the past 10 years. Renumbering Black Panther is pretty gimmicky b/c there is no gap in publishing. Same goes for Justice League, but the relaunch since 2 years ago has been so awful, I can see why they would do it, just to make a clean break.
@Patio: The letter writer got it slightly wrong. JUSTICE LEAGUE isn’t being relaunched, it is an entirely seperate book – JUSTICE LEAGUE and JUTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA.
"That’s what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age."
@Conor: I can see why they did renumber Thor, he had been out of circulation for a while, but a recent example is Hulk, they boot him out of his renumbered title and give that to Hercules, and then relaunch Hulk. From the point of the Marketing dept., I can see the intended goal, but its like you pointed out, if they did that to Action or Detective that would creat a problem and I fully agree, I just think that Marvel and DC should create other long running books to expand on that type of history. To renumber a book just because there is a new creative team to me is pointless, but for the most part I would have bought the book even without the renumbering if its a book that I follow. I miss seeing thngs like an X-Men 94 or Hulk 102, or Thor 337 when Simonson came on the book. I guess being a long time reader, al ot of the newer marketing trends just don’t work for me.
Hey, come to think of it, how the heck did Thor get to #600 so fast??? Thor came on around the same time as the other Marvel books in the 60’s right? SO, how could he be ahead of FF, Spider-Man and X-Men? They must have renamed Tales to Astonish or something, right?
i feel sorry for the new readers looking for increadible hercules # 1-110.
I dont know if Chris is a member here or not but I wanna give him a thumbs up for that letter.
You can put a vote for me on ‘Spider-Man revealed as a Skrull’. To me, that is perfect to what has been happening to Parker for all these years. It gets away bad storylines or status quo changers and it gets the job done for Marvel to ‘restart’ the character. In general I am not a fan of what Marvel did to Spider-Man, I think we all know this. (I’ll save all of you for not ranting too long on this) I mean to me, there is really no reason to get rid of so many years of storylines just to get rid of one character. Or at least to put MJ to the side for a couple of years.
What I hated about OMD in general is that; it makes Parker look like such a tool and a jerk. He has the option of either letting his Aunt (who by her age should be dead anyways) live or having a happy life with his young/gorgeous wife and maybe having a child. The choice, at least to me, is so obvious that it pissed me off Parker decided to let his Aunt live at the end. It makes me sound like a bad person I know; but if you had the choice Parker had what would you do? I would’ve stayed with my wife.
Anyways I would’ve loved if Spidey was a Skrull and it would’ve been much better then a deal with the devil. Overall though if I was EIC I wouldnt allow for a retcon to happen anyways. Cause if you think about it, all the stories in BND right now….you can just add MJ in, reconfigure the plot a tad…and it would really be the same in terms of entertainment.
(Sorry for a double post but I also want to add)
Again I dont wanna sound like a prick when it comes to deciding for someone to die or not. I mean it’s always horrible to see someone go, I’m not suggesting Parker should’ve been like ‘F*** you May, I’m keeping my wife’…….I’m just saying; how incredible would it have been if we had a touching moment of Parker deciding to let his Aunt RIP and have an emotional issue to go with it? That to me would’ve been a better comic then just deciding to screw your wife (and future child).
Also, if DC could ‘kill’ Batman…..which btw Morrison mentioned the epilogue for FC #7 was Dan Didio’s note to add Batman in the end….Anyways; if DC would let a writer ‘kill’ a major character; then I think it would’ve been a no brainer for Marvel to let a big name (like Spidey) to be a Skrull.
@patio: Thor was originally Journey into Mystery, and when Thor came in to the book it was at #83. I can only asssume that Journey into Mystery #1 predates FF #1
What about this: Mary Jane volunteers to die to save Aunt May, the deal with the devil is done, Aunt May dies some years later and peter is alone again and he can have a new girlfriend and the subject of a marriage won’t arise because of his kid being born dead.
He’s reveal could be considered false by the public because Stark is on the run and maybe he wanted to protect his friend Spider-Man by placing a photographer or whatever he is in a Spider-Man suit.
The problem is with Osborn – can’t figure that out. I of course haven’t read any of the comics this things take place in so I don’t know if this was possible.
Or Aunt May could have been a Skrull and something… I don’t know.
@chlop: All of those ideas are much better then what JMS/Joey Q slapped us in the face with.
Again what I always will detest do on why Joey Q and the rest of Marvel wanted to do this was….they are afraid of getting older. They are realising that the character they have grown up with, is starting to go a bit older like them. Maybe still looking the same; but getting married, possibly having a kid, growing more mature, and having a steady job….the freaked the hell out of them and anyone else who approved of this retcon.
Instead of trying to provide us a rich character development with a major character….they just had a metaphysical being wipe all of that out of exsistence and make Peter a 20-something; single, child like guy again. To me, that just insults not only the people who have followed the character for so long (or even from the very beginning); but to writers everywhere.
I can’t do the One More Day conversation again. It was the best of a series of bad choices; if, by being being Spider-Man, Peter had gotten Uncle Ben’s wife killed as well, he would have blown his head off. If he had been a Skrull, it would have been like a car crash between Rip van Winkle and the Sentry with a molested girlfriend thrown in for fun.
@jimski: Well what do you want to talk about?
We could talk about Grant Morri…..no….
Or how about Indie comics vs Mainste……no….
Rick Remender leaving Fear Agen…..no….
…..Do you wanna talk about sports?
@ Conor– Yeah, and no offense, but I don’t want to read about a 30-year old still trying to pick up college chicks. The fact that he’s hanging with a thrice-divorced best buddy helps none either nor was the fact that at the beginning of this reboot, Peter was around 30 and STILL living with Aunt May. After seeing him for years assuming maturity and developing more into the "power and responsibility" mantra, seeing him regress into an adolescent phase really turned me off of the book.
@Tork: Your loss is my gain.
I has a sad…
When I wrote the Spidey/Skrull letter last week, I guess my main point was "why not kill 2 birds…" You’ve got A: a Skrull/body snatcher story coming up and B: a character who you want to update (retcon). So why not just have these two storylines merge (like a Seinfeld ep.) I’m not saying this is a better choice, I’m just wondering if it flows better organically into the story.
I’m sure this has been discussed ad nauseum and my intention was not to start a war here. The Secret Invasion video show got me thinking about the "no big reveals dilemna" and the Spidey/Mephisto thing has always bugged me. I’m sure the book is good now, & I’m glad, but my curious nature always ends up getting the better of me.
i am sooo not looking foreward to new Ultimate Spider-Man 1 (although it will be cool to get one this time around) i think its a show of stregnth that the boom has made it to 130 issues, and i love to see its number just get higher and not drop back down. and i dont fully understand why black panther needed a new #1 when its still the same writer. that just seems stupid. i dont think that everytime a new creative team comes on a book, there needs to be a new #1, or that the same exact creative team should do a few story arcs and then relaunch the book. it seems pointless, and could be confusing to future collectors. and i personally like the idea of an established title, its comforting, and encourages back issue collecting. Of course, on the flip side another good model is BPRD where every story arc is a new series with a month or two between them.
Don’t worry, they will renumber it once it gets to 300!
Also, nobody answered my queestion; Dose ASM get better?
Re: Does ASM get better?
See Ron’s pick of the week review
@muddi900– I guess I wasn’t clear enough in my intentions, but I was trying to give my answer of "no" and then explain why it was as such for me.
Tony Stark is already on the way to being fixed. He’s lost his fortune for the third time and now his reputation among *everyone* (the heroes and the public) is destroyed. He’ll be a proper hero again just in time for the next movie. Honestly, his behavior during Civil War and after is a lot more sensible than when he suddenly became a villain and we found out he’d been a pawn of Kang for a while. THAT was way worse and now, I’m pretty sure none of you remember it.
As far as "none of the Skrull reveals" were a big enough deal, that just sounds like a bunch of whining. I know that’s a dick thing to say, but c’mon.
With regards to Spider-Man…yeah, there’s nothing more to say on the topic. Personally, I’m just glad I don’t feel like I’m missing anything by not buying Spider-Man three times a month. 🙂
@diabhol – you’re not missing anything by not buying Spider-Man… except a rollicking good time!
The Crossing… Teen Tony… that was a horrible time. That was maybe half a year after Hands of the Mandarin, too… which was kind of good!
Regarding Spidey as a skrull, wouldn’t that echo the Clone Saga a bit too much? And the clone thing ended with them saying "wait, wait, you know how we said Peter Parker has been the clone all along? Well, really it was Ben Reilly! Just kidding!!!". Probably the biggest comic book back-pedal of the last few decades. It would work if he had only been a skrull for a short time, but you can’t tell people that the flagship character that they’ve been following for years wasn’t really him.
@patio – I already have tons of rollicking good times. My pull is awesome. 🙂
@Tork – Exactly! Though I wasn’t overly impressed with the majority of the post-unfrozen Iron Man comics until Heroes Return (man, I kinda miss Stark Solutions!).
@ Josh’s letter: Iron Man’s current run is completely redeeming his character for me. If I had to pick only one character that I had to follow, it would be Iron Man. And trust me, that’s been a path if suffering for a long time. Sure, Tony could’ve been a Skrull, but that’s the easy way out. Fraction’s Stark has pretty well made it clear that he’s made huge mistakes and he’s now atoning for them. Extremis is gone. He’s back in the Heroes Return armor (albeit colored incorrectly, which is why they retired it in the first place, impossible to get right apparently), which pretty clearly signals to me that they are trying to undo all of the damage that’s been done to his character.
Reader’s Digest version: Take your own advice and give Invincible Iron Man a shot. Larocca’s art isn’t great, lots of tracing. Fraction’s storytelling is, lots of great character moments.
@Diabhol: I REALLY miss the Stark Solutions days. Buseik and Chen’s Heroes Return arc is what got me into collecting comics.
Actually, I think if there’s anything that’s redeemed Iron Man in the eyes of fans, it was Jon Faverau and Robert Downey, Jr. I know, after seeing it, a bunch of people who had been wishing Tony would die were now telling me, "Hey, you’re right, he IS a cool character!" If anything, I think Fraction’s been expanding on that. Still, in terms of the actual Marvelverse, I don’t think Tony’s been cleansed yet of Civil War. It’s going to probably take Tony and Thor burying the hatchet before that happens.
I still love Iron Man even though he made a bad choice. The things I liked about civil war was daring to change the status quo, but of course that’s all pretty much erased now except for Tony. They actually dared to cast a hero in a bad light is kinda new. They just don’t have the cajones to make a great story out of it. Where is Alan Moore when you need him? Revisionist history is never good(look at Sentry), the challenge for good comic writers is to use the tools they are given. By the way we don’t give them an eraser.
Is numbering really THAT big of an…….. issue(no pun)?? what about story and character developement. Thor could come out labeled Thor A. for all I care, its been one of, if not Marvel’s best book for over a year now, my opinion of course.
I think the big Skrull reveal should have been Skaar. And Apocalypse.