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