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Where Are You Paty?

Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2007 11:05 pm
by SamKarns
How are you and what's new in SC? How's the family and friends and have you started on your artwork and have you completed your website?

Where Are You Paty?

Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2007 10:09 am
by SamKarns
What happened to this place? Is anyone here?

Where Are You Paty?

Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2007 2:25 pm
by Slarti
Last I heard, she'd been having computer problems.

Where Are You Paty?

Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2007 6:27 pm
by Angelique
I just heard from her. She's beginning to catch up with online correspondence.

Where Are You Paty?

Posted: Mon Oct 08, 2007 6:24 am
by SamKarns
I'm glad to hear it and also glad to read some responses. It's been quiet around these parts since the blow up with Rivka. This is normally a pleasant place to chat. What we do need is Paty to return and chat up the way she does, with grace and fluidity. I love that lady!!!

Where Are You Paty?

Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 3:30 am
by Angelique
Latest word from Paty is that with her improving vision and the good weather she's got, she's been spending more time on various outdoor projects. Also, she's spending more time on her art. Naturally, that means spending less time on the computer, but she did ask me to post a hello to everyone here.

(And I could have used some of that good weather on Saturday. Instead, thanks to our "October Surprise" blizzard, I'm cleaning up broken tree branches and wondering just how our roof stayed on the house.)

Where Are You Paty?

Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2007 6:38 am
by SamKarns
I'm glad she's fine. How was everyones thanksgiving? I had a non traditional one this season; I had conitas , some guacamole dip, fish dip mixed with salsa and some salantro. I was a fun dinner indeed, I hope the dinners become less traditional for now on because whenever we have a turkey we seem to have that darn bird for half the month of december. This means, that's right folks, turkey wings, turkey soup, turkey sandwiches, baked turkey, turkey chips, turkey burgers, turkey cold cuts, turkey salad, and turkey mashpotatoes. Please fill in your details of your thanksgiving?

Where Are You Paty?

Posted: Mon Dec 24, 2007 6:35 am
by CliffordMeth
Paty is doing great -- she visited my family several weeks ago and stayed here.

Where Are You Paty?

Posted: Mon Dec 24, 2007 3:18 pm
by Ult_Sm86
I just hope she's having a happy holiday. She's without a doubt one of the coolest people I've ever met, and I haven't even really met her.

Where Are You Paty?

Posted: Fri Mar 28, 2008 5:02 pm
by SamKarns
Maybe her priorities changed when Dave passed away. It's strange not having her around anymore.

Where Are You Paty?

Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2008 1:29 am
by PirateKurt
She got Knee surgery and recovered slowly. I stayed with her over the summer to assist her in whatever ways I could. She has been doing lots of work at her farm in Belton and making lots of work in her studio getting it organized. We hope she will post again soon, but she's Busy like you wouldn't believe with a bionic knee now. Watch out Steve Austin!

Where Are You Paty?

Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2008 1:39 am
by Angelique
Originally posted by PirateKurt
She got Knee surgery and recovered slowly. I stayed with her over the summer to assist her in whatever ways I could. She has been doing lots of work at her farm in Belton and making lots of work in her studio getting it organized. We hope she will post again soon, but she's Busy like you wouldn't believe with a bionic knee now. Watch out Steve Austin!
And Jaime Somers. Can't forget her! By the way, how's everyone in that corner bracing for Horrible Hurricane Hannah?

Where Are You Paty?

Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2008 9:28 pm
by SamKarns
Hey!!! This is inexcusible. Where the heck is everybody? We need to liven this place back to what it used to be. Come on!!!!

Where Are You Paty?

Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2008 9:49 pm
by Angelique
Lately she's been busy lending her sage advice to a couple of aspiring comic book creators.

Where Are You Paty?

Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2008 9:20 pm
by Paty
:magneto
Hi y'all...
Paty here...
as Pirate Kurt says, I am recovering from total knee replacement surgery. I injured it waaaaaay back in high school, trying to vault over a T Rex... and have been very careful of it ever since then as the cartilage was torn in one side and at any given time it could dump me on my kisser! Not exactly a good thing if you are walking thru Hell's Kitchen or fighting a forest fire...sigh...
so... for half a century I nursed it along. but by this time, the cartilage had worn away totally and it was bone on bone and dumped me several times within a month or so... so it was time before I actually broke something ...

Now, this is an operation I do not recommend unless you really NEED it. for half a century of dealing with it and the pain it caused when it went "out" on me, sometimes putting me off my feet for two weeks or more, I thought I could handle pain pretty well. but this is nothing like you ever want to experience, believe me!
they push things down inside your bones and bolt them there!!!AAAUUUGGGHHHH!!!
I am doing pretty well, thanks to Pirate Kurt, who was a godsend this summer!!! I love nubile young men who jump to my every whimper!!! PK jumps nicely!...in a very masculine and piratical manner.
He , I think, has forgotten to tell you that in living here, he lived in the studio apartment area, and , sitting at Dave's big drawing board, ( he cals it the MAGIC BOARD ) LOL... he has started channelling Dave!
NO lie! He has seen him up there... and we know he is around this house and property all the time! He is apparently very happy now that he doesn't have to use the wheelchair and can come and go through the walls like Green Lantern with THE RING! shortly after his death, he opened the locked door to come in and tromp thru the house... I reminded him of THE RING and he has left the doors safely locked ever since. It doesn't stop him from walking around here, though!
PK tells me he now wants PK to read him Playboy jokes in the studio and when PK doesn't have a Playboy handy, Dave will lead him to one. go figure...
BUT, since PK seems to be channelling Dave these days I have asked the senior mods to make him a mod on cockrum corner. You wouldn't believe how much like Dave PK is!!! Even for me, as an old time witch... it's almost eerie! LOLOL
I shall cope! I have adopted PK as my third son and he is doing very well with his drawing and comic art... so the beat, as they say, goes on.

When I get a moment, I shall be opening up another Claremont Magneto appreciation thread, and I shall warn you ... it will be an APPRECIATION thread. No Byrne crap... no Morrison Feces... Claremont appreciation... cuz that is MY Magneto!
I do hope all loyal Magnophiles have been reading MAGNETO TESTAMENT... and will write both Quesada and Perlmutter to urge that they publically come out as saying this story IS in canon and continuity and not a "what if" or a different timeline. Unless it is the true origin of Magneto, it is totally superfluous and an antisemetic slap in the face of all the Jewish descendants of the Holocaust who love the complex Claremont Magneto... and embrace him to their bosoms... even if he is the adversary of the not so saintly Xavier. Magneto is RIGHT!!! His methods may suck moose, sideways with a strraw... but his premise is RIGHT. You do not bargain ... for your survival...with the human ape from a position of subserviance or servitude. You bargain from a position of strength and the superiority your powers can give you. Brute force is the only thing most human apes understand... it's always been that way and it still is the order of the day when you get down to brass tacks! If you trust humanity to do the RIGHT thing... and you are different from then...you end up in ovens. this is why alien invasion pix have always been so popular... from Rdd Planet Mars, and Invasion of the body Snatchers to Mars Attacks, if you are different, humans wanna kill you. Yeah.. survival of the dominant species... but humans aren't the ultimate evolution... much as they would like to think so. we are microbes on the atom that forms part of a hair on a cosmic flea who lives on the back of a cosmic dog who likes to chase cosmic cars...that's how important we are to the universe.

so, that's what's coming kiddies. Hang loose and the ol' biddy will be back ... as pithy and opinionated as ever!

HEHEHEHEHEHEHHEE...BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Paty
:magneto

Where Are You Paty?

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 3:26 am
by Ult_Sm86
Yeahp. Paty's back.

:LMAO Good to see you're so feisty! :rawr and YAY PK!

And too right should that continuity stay! What in sam hell are those ignorant bastards thinking! Quesada is running years of marvel history into the dirt! You tell 'im Paty!

Where Are You Paty?

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 3:32 am
by Love das flockige
Hi paty! :wave

It's nice to hear from you...I'm kinda new...but don't worry, I am also a fan of Claremont's Magneto!

Where Are You Paty?

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 4:33 pm
by Paty
:magneto
Oh, I have told Joey da Q... personally... in his own office... which I visited last year.
He seems to be a pretty honest guy but he does have a few quirks. One of them is that he is loyal to his friends. Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing... but when his friends are doing things that destroy thirty years of continuity and he doesn't seem to be watching the store, tha6t is bad.
As Ed inchief, he has to juggle the wants and needs of the suits against the clamorings of his artists and writers... who always want to push the envelope... and the percieved wants and needs of his audience. therein lies a conundrum for him. the bigwigs want higher sales and bringing the books in line with the big bucks movies, which they percieve as more important simply because of the revenue generated. the creators always want to push the envelope. but you have thirty and forty years of loyal fans who are becoming more and more disgruntled with the storytelling and presentation of the books. I am not talking about the slick, fancy printing...I am talking about the lack of stories in each issue and the preponderance these days of sex and violence. .. as well as the destruction of the core personalities of many charaters.
We used to have to build on the past characterizations and if we wanted to change them, we had to take into consideration all that had gone before and devise a VALID REASON for the change we wanted to make. Claremont did this with Maneto. Having used a previous storyline... when Mags got deaged to babyhood... to be the starting point for his rehabilitation. Having Moira remove the genetic block that was impeding the flow of his power and, thus, opening the gates of his power... but at the same time, bringing an ability to deal with this in a rational manner rather than having it back up and drive him nutsy fagan.
That was a valid and well thought out change. giving him a history that he had never had shown was a valid thing to do. that anti semetic dipshits have been trying to retcon it since the Harras era... and are still trying to do so...go look at tom Brevorts smarmy attempt to take MAGNETO TESTAMENT out of continuity and make it only a fantasy for validation of that point when Joe Q has actually written to fans out here that it IS in continuity... as an example of this continuing pogrom. Brevort recently tried to do this in his blog on Marvel.com. Adn Brevort was brought into marvel byHarras and is obviously continuing his policies.
then, of course, you have the adultery of Scott and Emma... easily explained without harming Scott's boy scout core personality by simply saying emma is controlling him... and , after all, she is still the White Queen of the Hellfire Club at heart if not in veritas. I do not believe that tarty bitch is a good guy... nope! not for a minute. I think she may be either a plant or actually trying... but in her heart she is a selfish bitch and belongs outta the X men PERMANANTLY forever! I am sick of seeing her bulbous super structure in as many places as wolverine... especially when it takes the place of good storytelling. I am sick of the miasma of constant death... of millions of mutants dying... of a busful of tens being blown to smithereens and of nothing but continual bedroom scenes between her and scott...endlessly... ad infinitum, ad nauseum...
I am sick of Brit writers wh don't understand our heroes and who obviously want to destroy them and make us as bitter and disaffected as they very obviously are...Like Morrison and Millar...I actually like Gaiman who only screws with HIS OWN creations... not those of other talented creators.
I am sick of the Ultimate line... especially the X books and wish they would end this stupid try at Millar rewriting the X history...cuz it doesn't work at all... and I am disgusted with the fact that the boyos have totally excluded all the powerful female heroines...in one way or another... sending them into outer space...marying them off... brainwashing them...putting them into the center of planets... you name it... they have been removed. Of course there are no real creative women in either storytelling or art at Marvel, in the offices. Secretaries, sure... but creators? nope. I Do not count Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake adaptations... she is a NY Times bestselling author and was that long before Marvel bought the small company she had signed with. Marvel's small concession to women... big deal...her series was popular and into it's thirteenth or fourteenth best selling book series already! I know Laurell... I used to beta read for her before the eyes blew out...she is a good, experienced writer although she says writing comics is a whole different animal than writing a novel. LOL... I told her..."no shit, kiddo..." LOL

but the simple truth is, that when I went to Marvel last year, it was a tomb! It was very corporate with gray walls, muted lighting... silent halls, and little cubicles whose walls reached almost to the cieling in tall gray columns. Very corporate. this was decreed by Perlmutter and it has totally destroyed the creative cauldron that produced the comics of the seventies and eighties...where creaters had fun doing stories...not screwing with the emotions of the audience... very sadistically, I might add.

the thing is... there is a small, very vocal and bullying group pushing all other viewpoints but their own off the net. If Marvel is using what is said on the net as a guide to what the fans want, they are getting a very warped and junenile "take" on their audience. there are still long time fans holding on and hoping things will turn around and get better... but they will only hold for so long. then they drop the books and go away and the number of books declines as the companies search desperately for SOMETHING to raise the sales reciepts. they think it is more sex, violence and bigger and bigger explosions. It is not. It is good storytelling... which , in most cses, they don't have any more cuz there is no more "Comics Code" to force them into writing stories and NOT using sex and violence to sell comics. There are no editors at marvel these days worthy of the title...otherwise a lot of so called stories would NOT have seen print.

The funny thing is, that Avi Arad based the movies that have done so well on the characterizations of the seventies and eighties...which is WHEN we had the code... and each book had a complete story as well as an arc theme...as they later called it. We just called it it a continued therme or storyline... and debated the validity of extended storylines. Go figure...
Now, one story takes six issues to tell and it is called an arc... but it is still just one stretched out story instead of six stories in a continued theme.

A lot of the newer fans who are really into stories instead of mayhem are finding the reprint books and are loving Claremont's storytelling. He knows his craft. And they WILL NOT let him write as he can write. He is not a fighter like Perer David, another excellent writer... so they push him around, shut down his books to steal his characters out from under him ...like they did with the dialectic he was building in Excalibur... or simply banish him to the fringes even when he was taking Uncanny from eleventh to seventyh place in the ratings... which was a totally insane thing to do to a rising book!!! You do not screw with the creative team on a book that is rising in the ratings!!! RULE NUMBER ONE IN COMIC PUBLISHING!!! So you tell me...rampant jealousy of Claremont and a blatant agenda to keep him from crecreating his own fan power, from being able once again to dictate the characters he wants to write... to fix years of bad storytelling...to recreate the wonderful X empire he created in the first place??? Oh yeah... blatant favoritism... the poker goys group in full and blatant action... and no one is watching or pointing and saying ...hey! we want our HEROES back!!!

Well... kiddies... us old folk are tired of fighting. If you want the heroes of yore... and we NEED to believe in the heroes of yore...back, then YOU willhave to take up the sword. You willhave to write and chase the nay sayers off the net... and you willhave to even maybe use the snail mail to voice your concerns as well as the net. It is harder to dismiss a letter in hand that someone wrote and mailed than it is to push the delete button... believe it! It is up to the young to knock these little lord of the flies brats off their mountain of crap and say "We want our HEROES back!!!" "we want our strong WOMEN heroes back, too!!!"

Welcome to all the new people... it could be a grand and exciting adventure... it once was... it was so much fun you couldn't wait to get your hands on the next issue! We laughed , we occasionally cried... we caught our breath in outrage or fear...and ran to the newsstand to get the next issue...we need that again. I could do without the glossy paper if the price could come down into a range where you didn't have to go into hock to read a comic book. I believe DC has bone back to using Baxter grade paper, a great savings, actually and the books look better to me than all this glossy junk Marvel is still putting out. Three or four dollars is too much to pay for smarmy sex and violence and a total lack of a story in each issue... and adventure in each issue.
My local comic shop owner, Mike, told me he actually went to a meeting of comic retailers and the main complaint he and other retailers had with Marvel was that there was NOT a story in each issue... and his readership and customers were complaining about that... and threatening to drop the books if it didn't change. I don't think anyone was listening.
I think Joey is doing the best he can in juggling a lot of crap in order to bring some sanity to books that have been written badly and crazily for a long time... but he has people clamoring at him from every side and he may have to kick some of his friends butts... and I don't think he has it in him to do that.
Don't look for the movies to help, either...Avi Arad, who kept the movies true to the eighties characterization has left marvel and the new director of western division...ie movies and cartoon series... will go to the extreme opposide direction because he is an old foe of Arad. The proof of the pudding is in the new cartoon series being shown overseas right now which brings back the Planet X Magneto... making him a mass murderer of MUTANTKIND!!! Now...what is THIS shit??? It hasn't been shown in the US yet... so the only fans who are complaining about this new direction for Magneto are the international fanship of magneto... but, you know what...? THEY ARE COMPLAINING...loudly.
Can one nasty bastard with an agenda change our whole history? sure. you got Morrison, you got Geo W Bush... you got Hitler...you got Savanarola, You got Hirohito and Osama Bin Laden...
If we don't learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it, y'know...and Marvel leads the charge into rampant stupidity of inbreeding, mepotism, favoritism, and both sexual and ethnic bigotry. They get worse and worse and obviouslyhavenn't learned a damn thing. It was bad enough when I was there twenty five/ thirty years ago... but Stan was trying to introduce women and ethnic diversity. Now... it is worse than ever. and that is not only a shame, it is a sin! Camelot falls again! We, as a species, haven't learned a thing...

Well... as you see, I am still opinionated...LOL
Paty
:magneto

Where Are You Paty?

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 5:48 pm
by Elfdame
Oh, good ... I'm not the only one who didn't like Ultimate X-men. Some of the ones I saw did have poignant moments, but I got tired of the ickyness. And of course I didn't like Nightcrawler being some kinda psychotic kidnapper early on.

And thank you for speaking up on behalf of those wanting strong female characters!!

Where Are You Paty?

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 6:56 pm
by Ult_Sm86
I lost all respect for Avi Arad when he approved "Hulk" (not the incredible, I mean the shitty one done up by Ang Lee. That poor excuse for an action film.)

I mean what the movies all come down to are this:
Are my characters there? In character?
Are they played by appropriate people and lines written appropriately?
and most importantly (it is a comic so this has to come up)
has it got ACTION!?

Ang Lee's Hulk was a terrible film and I'm so glad they remade it (and remade it WELL.)

Back to the topic at hand however.

1) Joe Quesada, in my personal opinion Paty, so don't mind me if it seems blasphemous. You must remember I've never met the man, is the Michael Eisner of Marvel. He's trying to "update" and "modernize" all these storylines and instead he's allowing writers to take a dump on history!

My biggest example of this is Spider-Man's Brand New Day where spider-man trades in his love for Mary-Jane for selfishness and arrogance to Mephisto (The devil, don't deny it that's who he is) to keep his poor Aunt May alive.

In doing so the last thirty odd years of spider-man has NEVER happened! Gwen's back! Harry's back! Norman's been hinted at! And even worse, even freaking worse!

House of M, happened! Civil War, happened! All of these things still occured, but half the reasons for spider-man to act as he did in each of those ongoing plots, (the deaths of mary jane, benjamin reilly, his unborn child, the cloning of mary-jane and himself, harry's family being slaughtered, etc...) DIDN'T.

So all reasoning for Peter Parker, all the guilt that makes him who he is and as interesting as he is, that will to persevere through it all, has gone out the window and been replaced by a happy go lucky, school boy attitude with ridiculous run-around, Fantastic Four quality villains. (And yeah, I'm looking at you Mole man.)

Then there's Daredevil. To make the whole rant a lot shorter than it really is.
W
T
F?

2) You're dead on with Ultimate X-men but I think it's been picking up. Then it got dropped again, and I only hold out on a prayer that it revives itself. A lot of the times it's not who we're use to, not the way we're used to seeing our characters, but one has to remind themselves that this is Ultimate. It's not Canon. "What would happen if these people were these people in a post 9/11 world instead of post WWII, Korean War, Cold War era?"

The transitions are amazing to me, the options are endless, the characters have room for expansion, or deletion, whole stories can be reworked (YAY a cleaned up Clone Saga!!) and best of all, and I mean best of all,

we get our heroes origins stories, re-worked, re-hashed, and creatively re-thought out. I love how they introduced Spider-Man to the X-men and I greatly enjoyed seeing Kurt as a victim of Weapon X. (However I don't like his crazy morlock phase, thank the heavens that has ended.)

All-in-all, I think Joe has a lot of work ahead of him and his reliance on the movies to make it better is not going to work.

An invisible woman origins story will flop.
A Venom Origins movie will only go over so well.
Multiple spin-off X-movies will only go on for so long before they get monotonous, and most importantly

Avengers is going to be pretty damned hard to get out in under 3 hours. They got Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America all slated for within the next two years. So that puts Avengers at what? 2011, 12?
Good luck Marvel. I want to see them pull it off, and I hope they do, but at the same time I just have this gut feeling it won't work.

But nothing would please me more than to see it happen.

BTW Paty, excellent rant. I let my friends read it and most concur. The ones who didn't were kicked out of the room :toothy

Where Are You Paty?

Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 3:43 am
by Love das flockige
Originally posted by Paty
:then, of course, you have the adultery of Scott and Emma... easily explained without harming Scott's boy scout core personality by simply saying emma is controlling him... and , after all, she is still the White Queen of the Hellfire Club at heart if not in veritas. I do not believe that tarty bitch is a good guy... nope! not for a minute. I think she may be either a plant or actually trying... but in her heart she is a selfish bitch and belongs outta the X men PERMANANTLY forever! I am sick of seeing her bulbous super structure in as many places as wolverine... especially when it takes the place of good storytelling. I am sick of the miasma of constant death... of millions of mutants dying... of a busful of tens being blown to smithereens and of nothing but continual bedroom scenes between her and scott...endlessly... ad infinitum, ad nauseum...
way to hit the nail on the head, paty! thank god, I thought I was just nuts for hating Emma Frost! I about died when those two...ugh I won't even say it. Thank you, thank you, thank you :worship
A lot of the newer fans who are really into stories instead of mayhem are finding the reprint books and are loving Claremont's storytelling.

pretty much, you've just described my X-men habits in a nutshell. I became so disillusioned with the uncanny timeline of my adolescence that I reverted back to the claremont storyline. Mind you, I'm of the generation that would wake up on saturday mornings to watch the X-Men on tv...that show was my intro to marvel...you know, the series with Jubilee in the loud yellow coat and rogue with that great leather jacket over spandex look? Good times, good times!

Where Are You Paty?

Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 8:51 pm
by neling4
Well, I'm one of the "old folks" and a "long time fan" as well. I keep posting over on the Marvel forums to let them know what I would like to see in my comical books, but I feel like I am, mostly, being ignored. There are a lot of things that were once canon, being brushed aside and retconned, such as the friendship between Kurt and Logan that was once so beautifully written by Mr. Claremont. I really miss that friendship.

I am still waiting for my Nightcrawler/Wolverine series, and a retcon of the Draco awfulness.

Where Are You Paty?

Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 5:05 pm
by Paty
:magneto
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA
eeryone has a right to their own opinions, and I don't decry discussion...LOL... or contrasting views...but when one person demands everything going their own almighty way... hey... that is totally stupid or crazed.
Now, because i am legally blind, I don't do a lot of internet reading...I count on others to do it and tell me about it...LOL...but my opinions were formed a long time ago. The characters come first.. not the creators!!! Even Dave thought that! He was there to tell the stories of characters he loved... and he knew their core personalities as well as he knew his own! and he knew when some idiot, over the top writer was destroying something good and wholesome "just because he could..." And he hated that... and he became disgusted with editors and companies who would allow iconic characters to be raped and pillaged to bring them "up to date"

Iconic characters are just that... and history and time move behind them as they go on having adventures. Batman has been around since the thirties or forties... Is he seventy or older? No... he is not. We know that comic time does not flow as normal time does, even if the background changes. the TV show MASH spent a decade of christmases in Korea...and every year there was a cheristmas party... but the Korean war lasted only what? four or five years at best??? the series ran longer than the war but the characters celebrated every christmas as it came.
In storytelling, the timeline doesn't matter. we tell new stories of Robin Hood and King Arthur all the time...they are iconic...of course they are limited to a specific timeline in history, while our heroes are an ongoing work... spanning decades.
Now most characters are not tied to specific events in history. Magneto is. He is an Auschwitz Holocaust survivor. Is this a problem? No... except for the little antisemites out there that simply cannot accept a beautiful, charasmatic powerful character ...who can get more "action" than they can ...being a Jew!!! He can be a Gypsy... that's fine... but if he is Jewish, he has to be a ratbastard! and to them he never was and never will be... Jewish! Or at least, of jewish heritage, since he has said that he can no longer believe in a God that would allow such a thing as the Holocaust to happen... and I am right with him there, as was Dave!

but iconic characters move in their own timeline...and the settings just change behind them to keep a point of recognition with the modern reality we live in. You could even say that mutants go through childhood, puberty and the teen years like anyone else... but then stop aging when they reach maturity...or only age slowly after that. It is easier to say that the whole forty years of X time has only happened in about five or so years... the backgrounds just change. cuz then you don't have to explain that OK... mutants don't age, but what about the supporting characters? Aunt May, for exmple...aunt May is a mutant...she is gonna live forever with that bun on the back of her head!

AND YOU ARE SO RIGHT... spidey would never make a deal with the devil... which is exactly what mephisto is!!! His doing so totally invalidates him as a hero with principles...and that is wrong. Besides... can Mephisto do this? aren't the acts of the devil supposed to all be lies and illusions? Is this new Spidey world any more real than House of M was? I cannot believe it to be so. I long ago gave up reading spiderman...I only follow the X books to see what the hell they are trying to do with or to magneto these days, because i consider Claremont's Magneto one of the most brilliant characterizations in comics history... and it pains me to see lesser talent s trying to smash his masterpiece.... like the deranged man attacking Michaelangelo's Pieta with a hammer! pure VANDALISM!!!
If you want "cutting edge" moralless characters, ..goddamit! CREATE YOUR OWN!!! That's my message to the creators of today. but you know what? they can't. they cannot create characters we feel so potently about so that really bad things shock us when they write shocking stories. so to shock us, they must destroy good characters or degrade them or make them do things against their core personalities. and in the end, the ones who lose the most are the readers, who get disgusted and go away. Of course, sooner or later, Marvel willloose this huge older readership... and that is decreasing sales...so they will ultimatelylose, too.

I was very ambivilent about Joey da Q. I could see he was trying to establish a balance between cries to update and the huge oldtimer fans out here that have followed the characters for decades and who want THEIR characters back. He has pressures fromthe "suits" upstairs to bring the books in line with the movies, who have characterizations based on the eighties and seventies...when the characters still had character! He has young writers and the brits clamoring to "update" and make everything cynical and dark cuz it sells and it is what they want to DO! He has friends and collegues yelling one way and fans and collegues yelling the other! And the Suits yelling at him another way! and he has to juggle all this. I got the feeling that he was getting pretty tired of it all and all he wanted to do was draw again! but that was my take on the situation. He was gracious and hospitable and fun to talk to but I also got the feeling he was walking on eggshells with me... ME! who is easy going and good natured...whom you never hear complain...no... wait... that's Magneto...

BWAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHHHAAAA

In any event, I wouldn't want his job for all the tea in China. the only thing Chinese I want is the food at the local buffet!!!!!

But if I had it, I would do some serious house cleaning. I would peremptorily fire all the Bob Harras plants... like Brevoort... and the old time byrne pushers... like Rabbit Ralph Macchio. I would give thewriter emeritus of the X books... the one who CREATED the X Empire... Chris Claremont... back any and all characters and books he wanted... or even put him in charge of the X books as the editor. and I would retcon about fifteen years of bad writing. Not by making a deal with the stupid devil, either. Retcons have to be logical within the character's core personality and this was not! And, as i said, all the devil does is lie... so this whole retcon is a lie, isn't it? a bad one at that...

These people do not have the wherewithal in storytelling skills to fix what they have besmirtched. there are only a few real writers at Marvel rightn now and they are not being allowed to write because the plotlines are done by committee of editors and the writers are only scripting what they are told to write... and that is the sure way to kill any originality. It is NOT what editors do... dictate the storylines... it is just NOT! Editors help the writer to hone his stories, to remind him...or, dare I say it?...I dare...i dare, HER of things they have forgotten or points that need clarification or embellishment. That is what an editor does!!! And editor doesn't dictate the plot... an editor tries to coordinate with other writers and editors... so a character who isn't the Multiple Man coesn't appear in seven different places at once!!! LIke Emma Frost is doing now and like wolverine has done forever.. ad infinitum, ad nauseum...Wolverine IS the Multiple man... he has to be... he appears each month in a dozen places at once!!!AAARRRGGGHHHHH!!!
the most popular character at marvel is a murderous thug with no socially redeeming value. Once upon a time he was interesting...now, he is just a murderous thug with razors on his fists... a thoroughly unlikeable character and killer up close and messily... cuz those claws don't tap lightly...they slice and dice and the amount of blood spilled boggles the mind! I've BEEN an EMT! I know what bloodspill is like!!! Not every character he has cut, sliced or stabbed wears adamantium armor!!!
so, while the likes of Wolverine go on to instill in young minds that slicing and dicing and bloody mayhem is good...other characters are being ruined in sleazy back door politicking in office.
What can we do about it? WRITE, DAMMIT! and if a character's actions disgust you then write and condemn not only the writer, but the editor that let that happen... or, worse, MADE it happen!!! and write to the head honchos... Perlmutter, Fine, ... guys like that who don't have a clue as to what is happening in the books! CC Joey, too so that he can go up and say..."yeah... this is what I was saying I am up against!" and maybe get a little backbone help from upstairs.
Joey is a nice guy. I liked him. I was prepared not to like him... but I did like him. But I think the Editor in Chief spot takes more than a nice guy. It takes a person who loves Marvel and it's characters and will protect them... at all costs... even the disfavor of so called friends...cuz if your friends turn their back on you because you are doing your JOB... THEN THEY AREN'T YOUR FRIENDS, ARE THEY? Joey gives into his "friends" too mych...
I think Joe doesn't want to lose his buddies... but by not doing his job to protect the characters, he loses their respect. The may like him but they know they can do things behind his back and he won't come down hard on them as he should. things weren't like that with Stan... he would blast you into orbit if you did something out of character for established characters unless you could prove what you were doing was a logical progression...then he would ask you how you would get the character back into his original core personality. You didn't argue... and you respected Stan for protecting the characters... and you loved him for it, too!
And you told better, more coherent , thought out stories! Joey doesn't understand this yet...if he ever will... and that is unfortunate. Because of it, Marvel seems to be a rudderless ship right now...blowing to and fro with the whims of the internet breezes... the posters whims. and the old time fans are silent... watching and waiting for sanity to return or finally giving up and going away... and this is terrible...cuz those old time fans are marvel's bread and butter account! Buying books and merchandise, instilling a love of the characters in their children and their grandchildren and keeping the industry alive!
Without a loyal fandom, the comics will not survive... there are too many other distractions for a fast paced society...so you need the loyalty of people who have invited the characters into their lives for years, decades... and STILL want to if the characters even resemble the ones they knew. When they don't...it's byebye...with a tear in the eye and a sourness in the pit of the stomach...
And, I fear, that is happening far too often these days...

Paty
:magneto

Where Are You Paty?

Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 5:38 pm
by Elfdame
I was talking to the guy at the comic book store yesterday -- and I admit right here that I only buy the old stuff; I'm too much of a geezer for the new stuff -- but he said he too quit reading Ult X-men and stuff awhile back for the same reason: NO STORIES in them.

I am not sure about Wolverine being only a bloodthirsty Cuisinart on legs, as I haven't kept up with him lately. I do enjoy the older novelisations of him (Christopher Golden's are great) and liked Millar's _Enemy Of The State_ b/c it showed the internal conflict. He probably *is* overused, but I can see people doing that because he's recognizable. At least I can see Dave's drawing whenever I use the Wolverine postage stamp.

As far as Magneto and being Jewish only by heritage, Roy Rogers didn't believe in a god for a great part of his life, because he didn't understand how god could be loving if there were so many sick and abandoned kids in the world. He always visited children's hospitals (with Trigger!) and of course several of his own children were adopted from sad beginnings. Eventually his kids' faith led him to the Christian God. So ... if we ever want an observant Magneto ... it could happen. {Elfdame ducks flaming swords she just knows are coming ... heh heh}

But I think the Holocaust is a very crucial part of his psychic makeup. A perfect reason NOT to trust humans. Like, duh. Why tamper with that. And his mutant gene could give him longevity, not to mention being turned into a baby when he was, what, probaby my age ... so ... yeah, ya gotta have the Holocaust to have a three-dimensional Mags. IMO.

Oh, and about the Spidey thing ... Spider-man's always been #1 with me ... haven't followed all the comics all these years, but in general ... and to have Peter "Good Guy" Parker make a deal with Mephisto -- UGH! I get that he was under duress and all, and the whole guilt thing, but still, to me, who's wanted to be Spidey for like 40 years, it barfed me out. Sometimes too much drama is too much drama. At least Nightcrawler had the, um, male parts enough to slap the sonuvagun, even threatened him with the sword. I would hope dear little mild-mannerd PP would at least have fought as hard for his marriage as for a hopeless cause, and then (traditionalist that I am) to have MJ prefer for him to have a perfect life instead of sticking to her marriage vows ... well, don't get me started. {waddaya mean, "already started and finished"?}

Good to see you ranting, er, posting again, Paty. Even tho I'm a relative newbie, your posts are always heartfelt and informative.

[Edited on 10/10/08 by Elfdame]

Where Are You Paty?

Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 5:53 pm
by steyn
Don't forget long. Uber long, but that's so great about them. I just lie my head on my arms and read. :D