So the latest news of the week is that Disney bought Marvel Entertainment(read: Marvel Comics) for four billion dollars. Honestly, they got it for a steal. If you think about it, the Spider-man movies have collectively made over a billion dollars for Sony. The X-men movies have made close to that amount, and lets not even mention how many records Iron Man 2 will break.
Soooooo what does that mean, exactly? Will Disney now make all of the Marvel books kiddy? Will we start seeing The Incredible Duck, starring Donald Duck as the gamma-irradiated Duck? Goofy as the Iron-Goof? The Amazing Spider-Mouse, starring Mickey Mouse? Wait...that last one might actually be good...
Anywho, a lot of people are 'freaking' out over this in the blogosphere, and honestly its completely unwarrented. Take a look at Touchstone Pictures, ABC, ESPN, or Pixar. What do they have in common? They are all owned by Disney and they are all autonomous. Look at Warner Bros. and DC Comics. WB owns DC but they still get to do what they want. The only difference you'll probably see in comics is that Marvel will be able to keep a lot of their pet projects, the ones that are critically acclaimed but low-selling, on-going. DC, thanks to WB's money, is able to have books like Magog and R.E.B.E.L.S. on-going and last quite a while. They are least-known, and don't sell as well, but they keep going. You'll see the same now with Marvel I suspect. Also, you might see the Disney name in the fine print credits on the first page of each book.
The world shudders.
No, see Disney really wanted Marvel for the licensing. Disney paid four billion for Marvel, and that may seem a lot, but Disney is looking at the long term. With their marketing, Marvel licensing items could probably exceed 1-2 billion dollars in sales a year, and within a few years Disney will be making a sweet mint on their four billion buyout. Disney is well-known to be patient and cunning. I would suspect that within four or five years they will be able to wrestle the Spider-man license from Sony, and/or the mutants/X-men license from Fox. See, those two have perpetual deals. As long as they keep making movies within a certain time-frame, they keep the license. The news of Disney buying Marvel freaked Fox out so much they put the fast-track on a 'reboot' of Fantastic Four. The last movie underperformed, but Fox doesn't want to lose the license, so instead they will just keep going in hopes that the third time is the charm. I'd expect to hear from Sony soon about either fast-tracking Ghost Rider or giving it back to Marvel for some Spidey concessions or such, same with Fox and the Daredevil property.
Well, so that leaves out some major movies for now, but Marvel has a huge well of characters, so Disney won't be hurting too bad for the time being. Not only that, there is also the animation side. Think about it. Disney is one of the kings of animation. Lets see them do a few animated shows with Marvel properties. Put it on the Disney Channel, or Disney XD and the explosion begins!
Also, lets not forget the various action figures, folders, shirts, pencils, binders, etc., etc., etc., that Marvel puts out every year. Cha-CHING!
So in essence, comic fans have nothing to worry about. As Joe Quesadilla said, nothing will change when it comes to the comics. Instead, expect big changes within Marvel's movies, animation, games, and other licensing items. In fact, the only thing to worry about would be whether Marvel will get the autonomy they got filming Iron Man. Will Disney just let them do whatever? Otherwise, it will be just (big) business as normal for Marvel-ites everywhere!
Thursday, September 03, 2009
One More Day Sucked
Yes, I said it, which isn't a shock since most die-hard fans believed the same thing. One More Day sucked. Not only did it suck regular wise, it sucked monkey balls. Lets go over the reasons why...
One - The art was atrocious.
Yeah yeah yeah, Joe Quesada did the art. Yeah yeah yeah, at one time he was considered an awesome artist. So what? Honestly, his artwork was too scratchy, the poses most people made looked absolutely retarded, and lets not even talk about everyone's faces. Every time you see a close up shot of Peter, or Mary, or anyone else, they just looked...horrendous. Like, 'Oh My God why does Peter have two chins??' horrendous.
Two - Peter acted like a selfish brat.
This storyarc was so unlike anything JMS wrote for Amazing Spider-man that I think the editors pretty much penned it and just left his name. Peter acted uncharacteristically selfish, he was willing to do 'anything' to save his aunt. Even if that meant sacrificing his current family. Why? Because he'd feel guilty if she'd die.....and would practically kill himself if she were gone....whine whine whine. He was willing to throw away everything he and Mary Jane did together, just for her to stay alive. Wow......
Three - The marriage ended...
They finally 'put the genie in the bottle' on this one. When you ask Joe Quesadilla why he wanted their marriage to disappear, his answer always was 'you can't write good stories if Peter is married, I remember back in the day when Stan Lee first wrote it and he was a swinging bachelor..now THOSE were the days!'
Seriously, you are that horrible of a creator that you honestly feel that no good stories can be written with Peter being married? 'nuff said....
Four - The marriage was annuled in the worst way...
Hmm....can't have them divorce, that would take away Spidey's innocence....
Hmm....can't kill Mary Jane, we tried that, no one would believe she is gone...
Hmm...OH! I KNOW!! Let's make Peter make a deal with the devil!!!!
Oh oh! Even better! Let's have Peter's aunt May shot! Then, at his 'lowest' with May about to die(even though we spent various other issues showing how she was ready to go and forgave Peter, even TELLING him she forgave him for everything)and Peter feeling so guilty that he would die, lets have Mephisto(codeword: the devil)come in and say, "You give me your marriage, and I make her live again!"
GOOD!!
Five - The current stories rely too much on the 'Old Days'
About 70% of all the current storyarcs are boring, dull, and all around a waste of time. They basically have rewinded time and Peter now acts like he did when he was a teenager. How. Mature. Sometimes you'd look at the dialogue and would want to roll your eyes over what Peter does or says. Its as if the writers love the old stories too much, and just want to emulate it thinking everyone else will love it. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. The dialogue is dated, the settings are bland, and so far almost all of the villains they have created are just crap.
Sigh.....
Annnnnnnnnd rant off!
One - The art was atrocious.
Yeah yeah yeah, Joe Quesada did the art. Yeah yeah yeah, at one time he was considered an awesome artist. So what? Honestly, his artwork was too scratchy, the poses most people made looked absolutely retarded, and lets not even talk about everyone's faces. Every time you see a close up shot of Peter, or Mary, or anyone else, they just looked...horrendous. Like, 'Oh My God why does Peter have two chins??' horrendous.
Two - Peter acted like a selfish brat.
This storyarc was so unlike anything JMS wrote for Amazing Spider-man that I think the editors pretty much penned it and just left his name. Peter acted uncharacteristically selfish, he was willing to do 'anything' to save his aunt. Even if that meant sacrificing his current family. Why? Because he'd feel guilty if she'd die.....and would practically kill himself if she were gone....whine whine whine. He was willing to throw away everything he and Mary Jane did together, just for her to stay alive. Wow......
Three - The marriage ended...
They finally 'put the genie in the bottle' on this one. When you ask Joe Quesadilla why he wanted their marriage to disappear, his answer always was 'you can't write good stories if Peter is married, I remember back in the day when Stan Lee first wrote it and he was a swinging bachelor..now THOSE were the days!'
Seriously, you are that horrible of a creator that you honestly feel that no good stories can be written with Peter being married? 'nuff said....
Four - The marriage was annuled in the worst way...
Hmm....can't have them divorce, that would take away Spidey's innocence....
Hmm....can't kill Mary Jane, we tried that, no one would believe she is gone...
Hmm...OH! I KNOW!! Let's make Peter make a deal with the devil!!!!
Oh oh! Even better! Let's have Peter's aunt May shot! Then, at his 'lowest' with May about to die(even though we spent various other issues showing how she was ready to go and forgave Peter, even TELLING him she forgave him for everything)and Peter feeling so guilty that he would die, lets have Mephisto(codeword: the devil)come in and say, "You give me your marriage, and I make her live again!"
GOOD!!
Five - The current stories rely too much on the 'Old Days'
About 70% of all the current storyarcs are boring, dull, and all around a waste of time. They basically have rewinded time and Peter now acts like he did when he was a teenager. How. Mature. Sometimes you'd look at the dialogue and would want to roll your eyes over what Peter does or says. Its as if the writers love the old stories too much, and just want to emulate it thinking everyone else will love it. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. The dialogue is dated, the settings are bland, and so far almost all of the villains they have created are just crap.
Sigh.....
Annnnnnnnnd rant off!
The Latest TPB Batch
Whew, time flies. I blink and I read like well over 7 trades within a few days. Going to bleed through these quick. Anywho, lets get the ball started...
First off, there's the one-two punch of Batman R.I.P.(Special Edition Hardcover) and Final Crisis(Special Edition Hardcover). Again, I have read these previously via single issues, so it was interesting to read it all at once. Batman R.I.P., which was Grant Morrison's opus, was quite amazing. The story revolves around a group of super-evil aristocrats that have figured out Batman's identity, and go about destroying his life completely. When I first read this I thought it was a mess, and too confusing for most readers. After the second go around, it was quite a mind-opener. I say this a lot, but I missed a LOT of things the first time around. For example, what does the phrase "Zurr en Arrh" actually mean? If you didn't actually read into the final page of the last issue of R.I.P., you would miss the fact that it meant Zorro in Arkham. Wierd, right? Same with the revelation of Bat-Mite. Also, since its the special edition, it came with the two issues of Last Rites, which bridges the gap between what happened within the pages of Final Crisis. They were ok, mainly its just two more issues of Morrison explaining how badass Batman is.
Final Crisis, on the other hand, still sucked. It was a mess, the pacing was horrible, and it was generally all-around confusing. I still can't really explain the story. It is about Darkseid being transferred to some human, and then controlling the world, but then it turns out he isn't the main villain and the real bad guy wants to destroy all worlds and all universes by sucking them like a vampire....I'm not sure....Also, if this special edition didn't include the Superman Beyond issues, you wouldn't know who the heck the main villain of the story was! I am serious! If you would just read the main Final Crisis series, you'd get to the final issue and wonder who the heck Mandrakk was! If it wasn't for Superman Beyond, you wouldn't realize this was the true threat, not Darkseid taking over the Earth. Most of the time, thanks to the pacing, things are incredibly confusing. One issue goes. incredibly. slow. Only giving you a small amount of information. Whereas the very next issue goessofastyoucan'tkeepup. Yep. That bad.
I'd say read Batman R.I.P., and read Batman: Last Rites just for the fact that Batman is such the badass in those issues, maybe you should also read Final Crisis #6(again, because it shows how badass Batman is), and skip the rest.
Invincible Iron-Man volumes 1 and 2. This covers The Five Nightmares storyline, and the first part of Tony Stark: Most Wanted. Five Nightmares covers Tony Stark facing the nightmare of Iron-Man technology being used to kill people, whereas Most Wanted deals with the aftershocks of Secret Invasion(more on that later)where Tony is blamed for that crisis, and is now on the run. This is Matt Fraction at his best. The stories are fast, and insane, albeit they get depressing. It seems it is Matt Fraction's job to tear Tony Stark down about thirty pegs....yeah each issue makes it a bit harder for ol' Shellhead. Salvador Larroca does the artwork for this series, and he draws a pretty dang good Iron-Man. His faces, on the other hand, are pretty horrendous at times. One girl goes from being skinny and her face looking good, to the next panel he tries to draw her making a 'stumped' emotion and instead makes her face look completely fat. Also, the colors are a bit wierd sometimes as well. As my girlfriend noticed, sometimes Tony looks so dark that he looks black. She thought at first it was James Rhodes, War Machine. Regardless, the books are good and definitely worth reading. In fact, the second volume looked so interesting that one of my friends, Nicki, actually borrowed it from me!
The Secret Invasion saga was a big read. I had the main series TPB, Mighty Avengers Books 1 and 2, and also New Avengers Books 1 and 2. Of course, this isn't even half of what Marvel brought out, but these were the main ones. This was Marvel's summer event last year, where shape-shifting aliens, called the Skrulls, attack our world by infiltrating every level of world-wide governments and super-hero teams and attack within. While the main series was half decent, Brian Michael Bendis has problems when juggling lots of characters, and his pacing is still bad. Half of the seven issue series had almost all of the heroes in the Savage Land, far away from the main battles in New York City. Regardless of the somewhat lackluster main series, Mighty Avengers and New Avengers truly shine. They are written by the same guy, so continuity is kept really well for a tie-in to the main event. These books focus on how the Skrulls infiltrated us so well. I like how BMB weaves stories around continuity from the past few years, and just shows how much these aliens really hated the heroes of the Marvel Universe. This summer series came out the same time as Final Crisis, and it should be obvious this is a much better summer-event book. It is a definite must read, especially if one is wanting to get into the current continuity books that Marvel produces.
Finally there is Amazing Spider-man Vol 1 and 2 of J. Michael Straczynski's run. For starters, it features the art of John Romita Jr., so this should be a definite MUST-BUY for any Spidey fan. Thankfully, the stories are incredibly good as well. This was back when Spider-man was at it's lowest. Sales were bad, the stories prior were lackluster, so they gave it to the prolific sci-fi writer, JMS. For those that don't know, he was the head-writer for the show Babylon 5. Anywho, these first two volumes covers his first two main arcs, one focusing on Spider-man's powers, and another focusing on May Parker, Peter Parker(Spider-man for those that don't know)'s aunt, finding out that Peter is Spider-man. While the first arc was a tiny bit controversial, as it introduced that Spidey's powers may be mystical and more totemic based than radioactive-spider based, it was a great read. The art, oh goodness the art is amazing, and seeing the big fights between Spidey and the big-bad of the storyarc, Morlun, are like image stills of an animated series. The second arc, which is pretty much just a continuation of the first one, finally does something amazing in Amazing Spider-man, by allowing May Parker to finally know what Peter really is. It creates a better dynamic between the two, and finally allows them to become closer than they have ever been, which was needed. Why was it needed? Well, at the time, unfortunately, Marvel had Peter seperated from Mary Jane, which effectively made Peter a loner. And, while seeing Peter struggle gives good stories, Peter alone makes it too depressing to bear. Giving him that new connection with May helped relieve that depression, which in turn finally made Amazing Spider-man a great comic again...
Which brings me to One More Day......which was the last storyarc made by JMS. I know, its strange skipping all the rest of his run and going straight to this but it is now time to rant..
Ladies and gentlemen, lets get ready to RUMBLE!!!
First off, there's the one-two punch of Batman R.I.P.(Special Edition Hardcover) and Final Crisis(Special Edition Hardcover). Again, I have read these previously via single issues, so it was interesting to read it all at once. Batman R.I.P., which was Grant Morrison's opus, was quite amazing. The story revolves around a group of super-evil aristocrats that have figured out Batman's identity, and go about destroying his life completely. When I first read this I thought it was a mess, and too confusing for most readers. After the second go around, it was quite a mind-opener. I say this a lot, but I missed a LOT of things the first time around. For example, what does the phrase "Zurr en Arrh" actually mean? If you didn't actually read into the final page of the last issue of R.I.P., you would miss the fact that it meant Zorro in Arkham. Wierd, right? Same with the revelation of Bat-Mite. Also, since its the special edition, it came with the two issues of Last Rites, which bridges the gap between what happened within the pages of Final Crisis. They were ok, mainly its just two more issues of Morrison explaining how badass Batman is.
Final Crisis, on the other hand, still sucked. It was a mess, the pacing was horrible, and it was generally all-around confusing. I still can't really explain the story. It is about Darkseid being transferred to some human, and then controlling the world, but then it turns out he isn't the main villain and the real bad guy wants to destroy all worlds and all universes by sucking them like a vampire....I'm not sure....Also, if this special edition didn't include the Superman Beyond issues, you wouldn't know who the heck the main villain of the story was! I am serious! If you would just read the main Final Crisis series, you'd get to the final issue and wonder who the heck Mandrakk was! If it wasn't for Superman Beyond, you wouldn't realize this was the true threat, not Darkseid taking over the Earth. Most of the time, thanks to the pacing, things are incredibly confusing. One issue goes. incredibly. slow. Only giving you a small amount of information. Whereas the very next issue goessofastyoucan'tkeepup. Yep. That bad.
I'd say read Batman R.I.P., and read Batman: Last Rites just for the fact that Batman is such the badass in those issues, maybe you should also read Final Crisis #6(again, because it shows how badass Batman is), and skip the rest.
Invincible Iron-Man volumes 1 and 2. This covers The Five Nightmares storyline, and the first part of Tony Stark: Most Wanted. Five Nightmares covers Tony Stark facing the nightmare of Iron-Man technology being used to kill people, whereas Most Wanted deals with the aftershocks of Secret Invasion(more on that later)where Tony is blamed for that crisis, and is now on the run. This is Matt Fraction at his best. The stories are fast, and insane, albeit they get depressing. It seems it is Matt Fraction's job to tear Tony Stark down about thirty pegs....yeah each issue makes it a bit harder for ol' Shellhead. Salvador Larroca does the artwork for this series, and he draws a pretty dang good Iron-Man. His faces, on the other hand, are pretty horrendous at times. One girl goes from being skinny and her face looking good, to the next panel he tries to draw her making a 'stumped' emotion and instead makes her face look completely fat. Also, the colors are a bit wierd sometimes as well. As my girlfriend noticed, sometimes Tony looks so dark that he looks black. She thought at first it was James Rhodes, War Machine. Regardless, the books are good and definitely worth reading. In fact, the second volume looked so interesting that one of my friends, Nicki, actually borrowed it from me!
The Secret Invasion saga was a big read. I had the main series TPB, Mighty Avengers Books 1 and 2, and also New Avengers Books 1 and 2. Of course, this isn't even half of what Marvel brought out, but these were the main ones. This was Marvel's summer event last year, where shape-shifting aliens, called the Skrulls, attack our world by infiltrating every level of world-wide governments and super-hero teams and attack within. While the main series was half decent, Brian Michael Bendis has problems when juggling lots of characters, and his pacing is still bad. Half of the seven issue series had almost all of the heroes in the Savage Land, far away from the main battles in New York City. Regardless of the somewhat lackluster main series, Mighty Avengers and New Avengers truly shine. They are written by the same guy, so continuity is kept really well for a tie-in to the main event. These books focus on how the Skrulls infiltrated us so well. I like how BMB weaves stories around continuity from the past few years, and just shows how much these aliens really hated the heroes of the Marvel Universe. This summer series came out the same time as Final Crisis, and it should be obvious this is a much better summer-event book. It is a definite must read, especially if one is wanting to get into the current continuity books that Marvel produces.
Finally there is Amazing Spider-man Vol 1 and 2 of J. Michael Straczynski's run. For starters, it features the art of John Romita Jr., so this should be a definite MUST-BUY for any Spidey fan. Thankfully, the stories are incredibly good as well. This was back when Spider-man was at it's lowest. Sales were bad, the stories prior were lackluster, so they gave it to the prolific sci-fi writer, JMS. For those that don't know, he was the head-writer for the show Babylon 5. Anywho, these first two volumes covers his first two main arcs, one focusing on Spider-man's powers, and another focusing on May Parker, Peter Parker(Spider-man for those that don't know)'s aunt, finding out that Peter is Spider-man. While the first arc was a tiny bit controversial, as it introduced that Spidey's powers may be mystical and more totemic based than radioactive-spider based, it was a great read. The art, oh goodness the art is amazing, and seeing the big fights between Spidey and the big-bad of the storyarc, Morlun, are like image stills of an animated series. The second arc, which is pretty much just a continuation of the first one, finally does something amazing in Amazing Spider-man, by allowing May Parker to finally know what Peter really is. It creates a better dynamic between the two, and finally allows them to become closer than they have ever been, which was needed. Why was it needed? Well, at the time, unfortunately, Marvel had Peter seperated from Mary Jane, which effectively made Peter a loner. And, while seeing Peter struggle gives good stories, Peter alone makes it too depressing to bear. Giving him that new connection with May helped relieve that depression, which in turn finally made Amazing Spider-man a great comic again...
Which brings me to One More Day......which was the last storyarc made by JMS. I know, its strange skipping all the rest of his run and going straight to this but it is now time to rant..
Ladies and gentlemen, lets get ready to RUMBLE!!!
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