Post by paulpogue on Jan 1, 2011 14:21:15 GMT -8
This one deserves its own thread too. What did people COMPLETELY fuck up the most this year? Special bonus points to stuff that SHOULD be a sure thing but somehow turned into a disaster nonetheless. I think we can all agree that the Dan Slott Follies are the clear and natural #1, but I’ll leave it to others closer to the situation to recount that one. Let’s hear your nominees!
My two:
Bruce Wayne Returns and DC gets greedy: Were any of the “Road Home” one-shots enjoyable? Did any of them, in fact, rise to the level of “remotely readable”? They felt and read like a last-minute cash-in that was commissioned, oh, about two weeks before they shipped. Tim reuniting with Bruce in “Red Robin” was about the only decent non-Morrison moment to come out of the entire saga.
Marvel fucks up everything, “Siege”: In my personal pantheon, I rate this higher above even the Spider-Mess, if only because the Spider-Debacle has been going on nonstop for years and Dan Slott is just the latest particularly annoying and high-profile name to be mucking it up. But “Siege”? I didn’t expect this was going to be great, but I at least thought it would be “pretty good.” The concept was sound enough: “The Green Goblin rules the world and declares total war on Asgard, and all our misfit heroes have to get their act together to stop it!” The execution? Not so much. It had some good moments, don’t get me wrong, but in the end it was oddly unsatisfying. At some points, you could tell that they were just doing paint-by-numbers.
I usually don’t subscribe to Jesse Baker’s conspiracy theories about creators who do things solely to piss off the fans or to scream “Mine! Mine!” about their pet characters, but holy god, I make an exception to that rule when it comes to Bendis and Luke Cage. This is the guy who had Luke Cage bring down Norman Osborn last time, while Spider-Man literally stood off-panel gape-mouthed and slack-jawed. It was possibly the most fanficcy moment in the history of modern superhero comics. So now that it comes around to Osborn Takedown 2.0, didn’t it feel distinctly like Bendis put in that panel of Spidey slugging Norman almost against his own will, and probably at the direction of higher-ups? Seriously, if you’re doing an epic Norman Osborn War, it would be kind of nice for the Amazing Spider-Man to be, you know, somehow instrumental in the act.
Also: The other thing I don’t usually with Jesse on is any statement that’s structured along the lines of “Creator X should be FORCED to do Thing Y to Character Z specifically to show Creator X that they can’t ever use them again.” In this case, I also make a sole exception: The entire creatorship of Marvel Comics should be collectively tied down and eyes held open Clockwork Orange-style while they stare at a giant screen that flashes “NOBODY GIVES A FUCK ABOUT THE SENTRY” for as long as it takes for them to get the hint.
My two:
Bruce Wayne Returns and DC gets greedy: Were any of the “Road Home” one-shots enjoyable? Did any of them, in fact, rise to the level of “remotely readable”? They felt and read like a last-minute cash-in that was commissioned, oh, about two weeks before they shipped. Tim reuniting with Bruce in “Red Robin” was about the only decent non-Morrison moment to come out of the entire saga.
Marvel fucks up everything, “Siege”: In my personal pantheon, I rate this higher above even the Spider-Mess, if only because the Spider-Debacle has been going on nonstop for years and Dan Slott is just the latest particularly annoying and high-profile name to be mucking it up. But “Siege”? I didn’t expect this was going to be great, but I at least thought it would be “pretty good.” The concept was sound enough: “The Green Goblin rules the world and declares total war on Asgard, and all our misfit heroes have to get their act together to stop it!” The execution? Not so much. It had some good moments, don’t get me wrong, but in the end it was oddly unsatisfying. At some points, you could tell that they were just doing paint-by-numbers.
I usually don’t subscribe to Jesse Baker’s conspiracy theories about creators who do things solely to piss off the fans or to scream “Mine! Mine!” about their pet characters, but holy god, I make an exception to that rule when it comes to Bendis and Luke Cage. This is the guy who had Luke Cage bring down Norman Osborn last time, while Spider-Man literally stood off-panel gape-mouthed and slack-jawed. It was possibly the most fanficcy moment in the history of modern superhero comics. So now that it comes around to Osborn Takedown 2.0, didn’t it feel distinctly like Bendis put in that panel of Spidey slugging Norman almost against his own will, and probably at the direction of higher-ups? Seriously, if you’re doing an epic Norman Osborn War, it would be kind of nice for the Amazing Spider-Man to be, you know, somehow instrumental in the act.
Also: The other thing I don’t usually with Jesse on is any statement that’s structured along the lines of “Creator X should be FORCED to do Thing Y to Character Z specifically to show Creator X that they can’t ever use them again.” In this case, I also make a sole exception: The entire creatorship of Marvel Comics should be collectively tied down and eyes held open Clockwork Orange-style while they stare at a giant screen that flashes “NOBODY GIVES A FUCK ABOUT THE SENTRY” for as long as it takes for them to get the hint.
