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Post by michaelpaciocco on Aug 28, 2011 6:38:22 GMT -8
One of the things that always hurts Shooter in the public is that he is, unambiguously and admittedly, The Company Man. He speaks for Marvel, and if Marvel does something shitty -- and a company the size of Marvel is ALWAYS doing something shitty -- he takes the hit and he's probably the one who actually executed it. One of Groth's issues, for instance, is the work-for-hire thing, and he extensively quotes Shooter's defense of work-for-hire and the fact that he considers Marvel Comics, not Chris Claremont, to be the author of X-Men, et cetera. Which is, whether anyone likes it or not, THE ENTIRE ACCEPTED DEFINITION THROUGHOUT THE INDUSTRY. Claremont doesn't own X-Men, Miller doesn't own Daredevil, and nothing Gary Groth ever says (or Jim Shooter ever does) is ever going to change that fact. The more I think about Shooter, the more I believe he's an almost classic Boomer - he just got the order screwed up. Normal Boomers went through their rebellious phases in the 60s and 70s before becoming good "Company men" in the 80s and from there on out. Shooter had to be a "Company man" from the time he was 13 until the late 80s, then he became a bit more of a ...not sure "rebel" is the right word, but an agitator and a sort of whistleblower. And you're right about the work for hire problem - what exactly could Shooter have done? Openly advocate for creator's rights? I mean, it would certainly have been nice, but he would have just been fired that much faster - he tried to do what he could, and in a corporate system, that sometimes is all that can be done if you want to keep food on the table for yourself. Nevermind that if you're a good manager (and that, is what I suspect, is the ultimate cause of Marvel's Shooter-era success - he was a good watchman), a guy who knows that balance point between being concerned for the higher ups and the guys who work for you, you feel responsible to try and make things work. And sometimes that damns you on both ends. EDITED TO ADD: And for those of you who find this odd coming from a guy who sincerely believes in creators' rights - well, this is the way I look at it - at this point, getting involved in the system at the level of being a creator (and especially as an editor) is an endorsement of that system. My appeals are mostly to the readership and audience to support the alternate systems out there (as I am increasingly doing - my projections are that in 2011, less than 25% of my comics purchasing will be of DC/Marvel Product) and for creators to avoid getting into that system in the first place. Once their in, they know (or are simply willfully ignorant of history) what the system is, and what the results WILL (not might) be, and as such, I am increasingly less sympathetic. In 30 years if Joe Q is writing about how he had to "make difficult choices" and "tried to do the best he could" expecting any kind of sympathy, well, he won't be getting any from me. He knew better. |
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Post by jkcarrier on Aug 28, 2011 14:22:52 GMT -8
Seriously, how many true classics came out of Marvel in the five or six years before Shooter took over? The Kree-Skrull War and Celestial Madonna arcs in Avengers Tower of the Elephant, Red Nails, et. al. in Conan Werewolf by Night Tomb of Dracula Secret Empire/Nomad and Madbomb in Captain America Shuma-Gorath, Silver Dagger, et. al. in Dr. Strange Kull the Conqueror Headmen and Scorpio arcs in Defenders Master of Kung Fu Man-Thing Deathlok Ghost Rider Son of Satan Invaders The entire B&W magazine line, including Savage Sword of Conan, Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction, Deadly Hands of Kung-Fu, et. al. Thanos in Captain Marvel Killraven Panther's Rage, et. al. in Black Panther The Death of Gwen Stacy and the debut of the Punisher in Spider-Man Comix Book The All-New All-Different X-Men Red Sonja Star-Lord Guardians of the Galaxy Omega the Unknown The Eternals 2001 |
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Post by paulpogue on Aug 28, 2011 18:08:31 GMT -8
I stand corrected. Good answer  . |
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Aug 29, 2011 15:38:08 GMT -8
www.bleedingcool.com/2011/08/29/preview-flashpoint-5-by-geoff-johns-and-andy-kubert/Wow. WOW. WOWI mean, you have to hand it to Geoff Johns. It takes a certain, precise skillset, and a complete lack of anything resembling common sense editorial logic, to come up with a moment of sheer superhero incompetence that can trump anything Garth Ennis has ever done in The Boys, and then to make that the centerpiece of a summer crossover? And the jokes write themselves. Barry Allen: better off dead than alive after all. Barry Allen: and you thought you didn't like him before Geoff Johns: Making Garth Ennis look like Kurt Busiek. Edited to Add: Ok, yeah, possibly, POSSIBLY this is a fake-out - you know, because villains lie. I certainly hope so. But at the same time, Johns is...Johns, and thus pretty direct about these sorts of things. The ramifications of course, deeply interest and disturb me, because looking at it, Johns is telling his own ur-story here; if you read Barry as a Johns-Stu, and Barry's mom as a weird sort of stand in for his sister...man, this is fodder for a whole book's worth of armchair psychoanalysis. (Nevermind that this is an interesting retread of a story Johns told before near the beginning of his JSA run with Atom Smasher and his mom).
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Post by jensaltmann on Sept 3, 2011 6:33:49 GMT -8
I went to my LCS today and discovered that they had shelf copies of Justice League 1. Mildly curious, I wanted to buy one -- until I saw that they had marked the price up to €7. That's roughly twice cover.
I passed, of course. And I wonder at the business sense behind that. Sure, people will buy that. People who are either die-hard fans already, or who buy this from speculator mentality.
People like I, however, who are readers and not collectors/fanboys, will pass. The long-term problem being that we, the readers, are more likely to buy the second issue if we liked the first, but definitely won't buy any later issues if we didn't get the story's beginning.
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Post by paulpogue on Sept 3, 2011 8:49:00 GMT -8
I have to admit a certain amusement of the irony of the entire point of the big reboot getting itself shot in the kneecaps by the very worst of all the 1990s excesses.
Literally on Day One, no less.
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Post by jensaltmann on Sept 3, 2011 10:00:00 GMT -8
Completely agreed. Now, if I'd really been interested, I would've hopped on the bus at the corner and gone two stops to the next comic book store to get a copy -- that one is less likely to mark up copies than this one. But the fact that I went straight home instead shows how little I care.
The Superman Beyond #0 that I bought instead (that I'd gone to the store for in the first place) was pretty good, however.
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Post by Johann Chua on Sept 6, 2011 2:04:17 GMT -8
Watching Bubble Gum Crisis on Sunday afternoons. Got a good deal on Amazon.com just when I decided to buy it before AnimEigo's license expires (like almost all their anime catalog). Finished the first two discs, including all the extras. Watching the show in Japanese with subtitles since I heard the English dub was bad.
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Post by jensaltmann on Sept 10, 2011 7:50:09 GMT -8
The Kree-Skrull War and Celestial Madonna arcs in Avengers Tomb of Dracula Secret Empire/Nomad and Madbomb in Captain America Shuma-Gorath, Silver Dagger, et. al. in Dr. Strange Headmen and Scorpio arcs in Defenders Master of Kung Fu Man-Thing Deathlok Ghost Rider Son of Satan Invaders The entire B&W magazine line, including Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction, Deadly Hands of Kung-Fu, et. al. Thanos in Captain Marvel Killraven Panther's Rage, et. al. in Black Panther The Death of Gwen Stacy and the debut of the Punisher in Spider-Man Comix Book The All-New All-Different X-Men Star-Lord Guardians of the Galaxy Omega the Unknown The Eternals 2001 This list is impressive even if you remove the licensed stuff (which I would leave out, because if an adaptation of something is awesome, that's because the original is awesome) and Werewoof by Night, which I don't think belongs on this classic list by default. |
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Post by jensaltmann on Sept 10, 2011 7:56:10 GMT -8
It turns out that my LCS is raising the price of all the non-preordered DCNu #1 issues. I told them today that I'm not going to pay more than cover, and that the fact that I can't get to try out the new series means that I'm abandoning my plan of adding those that I liked to my pull list.
After all, the only people who would buy those comics at double cover or more are those who hope to make a profit on ebay with them, and they won't be back for the next issue. Nobody's going to pay double cover or more in order to try a series to check if they like it enough to buy it regularly.
Now, people might argue that I should've preordered. I'm bucking the system here -- why should I. Sure, it now affects those series that I was actively curious about, but even here I'm not curious enough to travel anover five minutes to the next comic book store to check if they have any issues at cover.
Not getting them just means I'll likely save a lot of money that I might've otherwise spent on the DC reboot series.
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Sept 10, 2011 8:56:42 GMT -8
So what you're saying is your LCS is actively discouraging people who aren't already comics readers from coming in and buying the new issues? And in so doing completely undermining the whole point of the relaunch?
NIIICEEE.
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Post by jensaltmann on Sept 10, 2011 9:17:38 GMT -8
I'd replace "comics readers" with "DC readers" before saying, yeah, exactly.
Ironically, I'm something like the target audience for this reboot. I stopped reading DC at around the time of Identity Crisis, and this reboot had me curious enough that I was willing to try some of the books.
If I had been able to get them.
Since I didn't, the store's short-term profit scheme results in a long-term loss, because, as I said, I had wanted to check those series to see if I liked them enough to put them on my pull list (which I could do since I have a job now).
Oh well, money saved.
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Sept 10, 2011 9:23:06 GMT -8
The point remains that your LCS is greedily shafting his existing in-store clientele at the expense of actually growing his business. That's astounding.
Michael
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Post by jensaltmann on Sept 10, 2011 9:51:42 GMT -8
I shrug and think that it's his problem if he's that short-sighted.
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Sept 15, 2011 12:41:30 GMT -8
Looking for a devil's advocate, folks: Can anyone point me to a reasonably coherent and reasonably current statement, essay or interview from someone who was actually there at the time that out-and-out paints Jim Shooter as a villain? Just to bring this up again, Tony Isabella has been ripping Shooter rather mercilessly in a couple of posts on his blog the last week. FYI. |
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