phillosmaster

September 8, 2020 11:35 am That is a valid complaint about AvX and that's about where it fell apart for me. Though I did like Cap admitting at the end that he wasn't doing enough to help the mutants. I thought that was interesting as was the fall out that integrated the Avengers and X-Men teams, but most of the other fall out from the event was not great IMO and AvX was a big slope downward for me when it came to being excited about the X-Men. It was like the inflection point. The X-Men versus Inhuman's storyline was just bad. It just didn't make sense to me. I have not read Infinity Gauntlet Warzone. I probably should since I do like both Nova and Elsa. I will get around to it. What made Annihilation and Conquest impactful for me is it felt like it had the space to be defining to the cosmic setting. I think that latitude was granted considering it was in the time period of Civil War so for the most part editorial didn't seem to care if you changed the Cosmic landscape. They were very focused on Earth politics. that was the last golden age IMO for events at Marvel. They have yet to reach that level again. War Of The Realms was an interesting idea that fell flat for me, but I will admit it didn't feel like a retread which is why I didn't include it. So kudos for then delivering a fresh event in recent history. I need to be fair. Infinity and Civil War 2 were just boring. I didn't get through either of them. I feel like after Thanos Imperative they have yet to really executed on a compelling Thanos. Secret Wars I will admit it was unfair to say it was a retread because it was different (sort of) and some fun stories came out of it. Though it was definitely trying to cash in on the Secret Wars name, which feels weird to me. I don't understand why they think event names are brands. It actually has the opposite effect. If you name too many thing Infinity Gauntlet or Secret Wars you basically get brand confusion or brand dilution IMO. How many Civil Wars can you have before people just sigh when they look at the name.

September 7, 2020 11:47 pm Last Marvel event book that was impactful for me was Annihilation Conquest. As a follow up to Annihilation I thought it was very effective. Nothing since from the Marvel events has felt as impactful. AvX I guess came close and I did for the most part enjoy that, but somewhere toward the end it fell a bit flat for me. It doesn't help that newer event books are literally retreads of old event concepts. I'm not sure the value of doing that when we can all go back and read the trades for Infinity Gauntlet, Secret Wars, or Civil War. We don't need modern echos of those stories. That felt like a weird move to me. My favorite model was the Atlantis Attacks (The original. I didn't yet read the modern one) model where it ran through the annuals. So you had an event and the tie ins all were isolated to an annual issue rather than interrupt the flow on the books themselves.

August 31, 2020 1:31 pm Having not read Legion before I found it interesting why you were not connecting to it. Legion's style of wide story telling with tons a characters and subplots reminds me of X-Men comics. That's a real love it or hate it style of story for comics. It does demand much more from the reader since you gotta hold that giant roster of characters and subplots in your head. Also it demands you be patient since they may not circle back to close the loop on something for quite a while. I always kinda loved that about X-Men, but at the same time as they added more and more titles to the franchise it also eventually put me off of it (since I was not buying all the titles each week and therefore was missing pieces of the story). There's a very delicate balancing act I think you need to perform in this regard.

August 31, 2020 1:24 pm Great discussion and refreshing to see a very different kind of comic discussed. I got into Japanese comics really big probably 15 years ago and what I found nice about it is it kept my comic reading habit alive when I got burnt out of super hero comics since often they focus in on very different genres of stories and the craft itself has evolve on a parallel path and gives me very different things to appreciate when scanning the pages. It's kinda nice sometimes to just pick up a Shonen Jump martial arts or sports themed anime and follow it since it's very unlike anything put out by the big two here in the west. It's kinda like eating popcorn. Sometimes it payed off with very meaty material (like Hunter X Hunter for me). If you were gonna do another series Monster is an obvious next candidate. I also really liked Osamu Tezuka's Hi No Tori (Phoenix) series. My understanding is Tezuka was influenced by Walt Disney and early American cartoonists and since he was the Jack Kirby of his industry he in turn influenced alot of the artists that came after him. Reading the artist interviews in some of the magazines I've followed over the years I have seen other manga creators talk about American comic book influences. Nobuhiro Watsuki (a now controversial figure) creator of Rorouni Kenshin has for example sited that he actively follows X-Men comics and has pulled inspiration from them.

August 26, 2020 2:23 pm Sounds accurate.

August 25, 2020 12:32 pm I don't think I've ever disliked John Lithgow in a role, but I agree that lately it seems like he's been surprisingly good in alot of the newer TV roles he's been getting. For example I remember looking sideways at his casting as Churchill for The Crown, but I really enjoyed him on that show.

August 16, 2020 2:32 am Thanks for the reply. I did mean modern Strange. I've read the Ditko stuff and I've read the Oath. Both great reads, but I haven't read any of the new runs on Strange that the guys referenced on this episode. I'll go back and check out the Aaron/Bachalo run. That sounds like where I wanna start.

August 9, 2020 10:32 pm I actually enjoy watching Zardoz. Though I really enjoy schlocky sci fi that swings for the fences. I will freely admit that it is not a good movie. The guys keep mentioning all these Dr. Strange runs and that they have been enjoying them. I keep meaning to jump on and try it out since I do enjoy the character, but I never did. Where would people recommend I start from if I went back and grabbed some of the issues to take a look? Also I wish we had the old numbering back so much.

August 6, 2020 10:03 am It's also really the logical next step for them to go considering we've been on a long slide to X-Men as antagonists for a while with stories like AvX, XMen versus Inhumans, Cyclops' turn and bringing alot of the old villains into the fold. While I appreciate that and I'm glad the books are finding momentum again I don't really wanna read it. Though they lost me already in the uninteresting and aimless era you describe so I was already a lost reader. I just wasn't won back by this move. I'm not sure anything short of some sort of X-Men reboot would get me back though so I'm a lost cause and probably not worth courting. That said even in the gap between the height of my fandom and now I usually found some book that I could latch onto and enjoy (even if I wasn't invested in the greater mutant story). If there are characters in these books that feel like they are holding onto the old morals then let me know and I'll check that out. It just felt like it wasn't for me anymore, but if a title comes out of this as a reaction to Transhuman and Pax Romana themes but emphasizes the old morals then that's not a bad way of shucking alot of the old continuity and effectively soft rebooting the idea of the X-Men. I might have a hard time seeing childhood heroes on the other side of the philosophical debate but at least then I'll feel like I'm reading a heroic book. I think there is a tenancy to see that the world is crappy and feel the heroes need to reflect the crappy world we live in today. I'd argue that is exactly the wrong stance. When the world is crappy we need our heroes to give us a moral center even more than when things are going well. Was Hydra-Cap an interesting metaphor for the state of the world? Yes. Did I feel inspired by the Hydra-Cap story line to be a positive influence in the world? It was certainly a way to spur introspection, but I don't think it achieved the same sort of goal.

August 3, 2020 10:40 pm I don't know. If one character heel turns then that's fine they can find redemption or not. It's a character choice. This seems like a shift in the central philosophy of the book. The X-Men were always the ones who tried to find the most positive coarse of action even if they weren't always successful. To me the core of the X-Men story is Charles' dream. The dream that Erik mocks. The fairy tale that seems always outside of their grasp, but they keep chasing it. When it's not about that I feel it's lost it's way a bit. You can stripe away all the characters and even Charles and Erik, but the philosophy always kind held it together. Without it these can be books about mutants but it's not really the X-Men anymore to me. I feel like this might be why I haven't really connected to many of the modern runs on the book. I might not like the message. It's a brave direction to take the books, but it sort of feels how Damian Wayne changed Batman to me. How do you go back to a traditional x-men narrative after this run and make it feel like a believable continuity. Maybe they have no interest in going back.