What's new with the big two: Marvel and DC Comics discussion thread.

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saint_matthew
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Re: What's new with the big two: Marvel and DC Comics discussion thread.

Post by saint_matthew »

Jabroniville wrote: Tue Oct 15, 2019 3:05 amYeah, that Gwenpool page is kind of emblematic of some things going on at Marvel right now (some of which I thought were gonna be done with once they cycled back to the "real Avengers").
Unfortunately I knew that wasn't in the cards. After all the "left wing spiral of death" is a well recognised paradigm in the publishing industry.
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Re: What's new with the big two: Marvel and DC Comics discussion thread.

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Kevin Feige becomes Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Comics
EXCLUSIVE: A major structural shift is taking place at Marvel. As the brand looks to put even more of its stamp on the Walt Disney Company with the upcoming launch of Disney+, all of Marvel’s creative personnel is moving under Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige.

Deadline hears that Feige is adding the title of Chief Creative Officer, Marvel, to his title. What that means for the brand is that all of the company’s key creative executives across film and TV now will report to him, sources said. Already master of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Feige’s oversight will extend to the overall creative direction of Marvel’s storytelling and content creation platforms. As part of this, Marvel TV and animation generator Marvel Family Entertainment will move under Feige’s Marvel Studios banner.

I’ve heard this move is being finalized this week, and it makes strong sense that Feige would extend his oversight even further than it stretches now. He was a major presence at Investor Day, when Disney launched its OTT streamer Disney+ plans, and Feige mapped out Marvel’s series contributions to the service that includes The Falcon and Winter Soldier, Loki, She-Hulk, Moon Knight, Hawkeye, What If? and WandaVision. He was also the frontman for Marvel’s upcoming product at D23 and San Diego Comic-Con.

Feige continues to report to Walt Disney Co-Chairman and Chief Creative Officer Alan Horn and Co-Chairman Alan Bergman. The decision to place all film and television production and the creative aspects of publishing under Feige comes at an important inflection point for the company: Marvel is moving into a second phase of its superhero film franchise launches, after an unprecedented record of success in its first decade. And the move comes as efforts to generate Marvel TV series for other platforms has wound down but soon will begin a new phase as Marvel creates premium content for Disney+.

Here is how the reporting structure will line up right under Feige: Dan Buckley will continue as President of Marvel Entertainment, where Ike Perlmutter remains Chairman. Long a creative collaborator for Feige in publishing and television, Buckley will have a dual reporting structure going forward, Deadline hears. He will continue to oversee publishing creative/editorial, and in that capacity, he now will report to Feige. Buckley also is responsible for publishing operations, sales, creative services, games, licensing and events. There, he will report to Perlmutter. It is expected that Joe Quesada will remain a creative lead for Marvel Entertainment, reporting to Buckley. It is expected that all the creative execs in publishing will report to Buckley.

This streamlining of reporting structure at Marvel comes as Feige’s importance to the superhero factory got underscored several times this year. That included a summer-long standoff between Disney and Sony Pictures over his services as producer and major creative influence on Spider-Man, after Far From Home became Sony’s highest-grossing film of all time at $1.13 billion. A truce recently was drawn that makes Disney a 25% co-financier and gives the studio a corresponding profit share for one movie. It also puts Spider-Man in one more separate Marvel movie, continuing the strategy that helped establish Tom Holland’s wall crawler in Captain America: Civil War before Spider-Man: Homecoming and bolstered his appeal with appearances in the two Avengers films directed by Joe and Anthony Russo.

On the film front, Feige capped a first decade that saw myriad superhero franchise launches without a single misfire, helped by that cross-pollination strategy. Those films had a collective global gross of $26.8 billion. This year, Feige produced all-time box office champ Avengers: Endgame, and two other billion-dollar global grossers in Captain Marvel and Spider-Man: Far From Home. That on the heels of Black Panther becoming Marvel’s first Best Picture Oscar nominee, after grossing $1.3 billion. Feige separately was just set to produce and develop a Star Wars film under Lucasfilm’s Kathy Kennedy.
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Re: What's new with the big two: Marvel and DC Comics discussion thread.

Post by Ares »

I'm honestly not sure how to feel about Feige being involved with Marvel Comics. I don't want the comics to be reflective of the movies for the most part, but if he's replacing guys like Joe Quesada and Jeph Loeb, I have to look at it as a positive thing.

Overall I suppose the way I look at it is that either nothing will change, or things will improve for the better.

Now if only we could get someone other than Geoff Johns or Dan DiDio to be in charge of DC.
"My heart is as light as a child's, a feeling I'd nearly forgotten. And by helping those in need, I will be able to keep that feeling alive."
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Re: What's new with the big two: Marvel and DC Comics discussion thread.

Post by Spectrum »

New... New Mutants is coming out? Why have you not told me that it was coming back?!
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saint_matthew
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Re: What's new with the big two: Marvel and DC Comics discussion thread.

Post by saint_matthew »

So um, yeah, The Amazing Mary Jane came out this week.

I honestly thought it was going to be complete shit.... I was happily surprised to find out I was wrong. The first issue not only drew MJ as an actually sexually attractive woman, she's drawn as something bordering on cheesecake: Two things that I thought had been deemed to be forbidden in the modern comic book industry.

Then there is the compelling writing, without heavy hand propagandist nonsense that could so easily have been inserted in to the book, especially when two characters discus the role of a female supporting character.... Yeah it could have so easily gone off the rails, but it didn't.

There's even the beginnings of a potentially compelling story being laid out.

One can only hope this keeps up & they don't pull a bait and switch.
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Re: What's new with the big two: Marvel and DC Comics discussion thread.

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So like I said earlier, I've been trying to give the new Shazam series by Johns a shot, and I have to say it is leaps and bounds better than the original Curse of Shazam story. There are some genuine good ideas and Johns is legitimately trying to write a fun book and flesh out the personalities of the foster kids. I even liked the idea of the Mary and Billy revealing their identities to their foster parents and said parents actually being excited about the kids being heroes instead of the usual. And credit where it's due, Billy was MUCH closer to his classic personality than he was originally.

Overall though, the book remains something of a disappointment. The attempts at being fun tend to fall flat, the kids personalities really don't feel that much more fleshed out, the takes on Sivana and Mr. Mind just aren't good, the Rock of Eternity going from being linked to everywhere to being linked to "The Lands of Magic", which are all basically huge sterotypes, etc.

Johns isn't a bad writer, but I find he works best with a co-writer, and he doesn't really get "fun" books. He can tell pretty solid, epic stories, he really has fun with the bad guys, and he can do a decent enough job of bringing some humanity to superheroes, but he just doesn't get the Marvel Family and needs to stop trying to maintain control over them.

Then, on the last page of the most recent issue, we get this.


Image


I'm honestly not sure how to feel about this. There's just a lot that could happen here. Maybe we'll get Nu-Shazam meeting Classic-Captain Marvel and the two will get along great, mutual respect, with Nu-Shazam deciding to take Cap's name in order to try and push the character more into classic territory.

Maybe "Captain Marvel" will be part of the Nightmare Lands, something trying to break Billy's morale. In that case, I see things going very poorly. We could get something where "Captain Marvel" basically criticizes Nu-Shazam, even including things fans have been saying about the character, only for Nu-Shazam to fight back, counter said criticism, say that those expectations aren't "realistic" and have him destroy the old "Captain Marvel" while proclaiming that his name is "Shazam!"

Part of me would like to think Johns won't go with the latter, but there's honestly nothing in DC's past treatment of the character to make me think it can't happen.

And oh, look, a "Magic War" is coming. Is it at all related to the Magic War that's BEEN happening in Justice League Dark? Is this a NEW magic war? Is it going to be related to the new 5G initiative?

I hate how apathetic DC has made me towards itself.
"My heart is as light as a child's, a feeling I'd nearly forgotten. And by helping those in need, I will be able to keep that feeling alive."
- Captain Marvel SHAZAM! : Power of Hope (2000)

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Re: What's new with the big two: Marvel and DC Comics discussion thread.

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DCeased was ... not bad. Comparisons to Marvel Zombies are inevitable, but this series is very different from the original Marvel Zombies series in that it's about the start of the apocalypse, rather than events after nearly all life on Earth has been destroyed. There are some genuinely poignant moments in this story, along with some unfortunately dumb and pointless moments. I like the way that the Guardian of the Universe who appears here is portrayed, not as some horrible monster but as a decidedly rational actor who recognizes when it's time to retreat rather than continue a hopeless fight. The biggest problem with the storyline, though, is that it borrows the "Lois Lane's diary of the apocalypse" story element from Busiek's Superman run, and it can't help but fare poorly in comparison to that.
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Re: What's new with the big two: Marvel and DC Comics discussion thread.

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So, apparently there's a new Legion of Superheroes and . . .

Image

. . . I think DC has officially become a parody of itself.

Wait, it's written by Bendis. Mystery solved.
"My heart is as light as a child's, a feeling I'd nearly forgotten. And by helping those in need, I will be able to keep that feeling alive."
- Captain Marvel SHAZAM! : Power of Hope (2000)

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Re: What's new with the big two: Marvel and DC Comics discussion thread.

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Apparently that's actually from a book called Legion of Superheroes: Millennium. Though the previews for issue 2 does contain at least one image that made me smile:

Image
"My heart is as light as a child's, a feeling I'd nearly forgotten. And by helping those in need, I will be able to keep that feeling alive."
- Captain Marvel SHAZAM! : Power of Hope (2000)

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Re: What's new with the big two: Marvel and DC Comics discussion thread.

Post by greycrusader »

The original version of the LSH definitely showed its age in having a vast overabundance of nearly identical Midwestern-looking white kids.

The above redesigns were not the solution to said problem.

All my best.
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Re: What's new with the big two: Marvel and DC Comics discussion thread.

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I think calling it a "problem" is overstating things, but the Legion does show that it was made in a Pre-60s era. Jim Shooter apparently wanted the first Ferro to be black, but he wasn't allowed to at the time, so he had change things. That said, attempts were made to make the Legion more diverse later, but it was done by adding more diverse characters to the roster rather than just doing a race-swap, as well as adding more alien characters like Blok and Gates. Really, with the diverse species introduced in books like Green Lantern and the like, it's a wonder we didn't see more new characters introduced. There was a cool character named Babbage that never got used, and other characters like Tyroc, Kid Quantum, Dragonmage, Computo, Catspaw, and the like tend to get overlooked.

It would have been cool to have a Thanagarian Legionnaire, maybe someone from Rann, or any other number of alien worlds.

I'm fully onboard with adding diversity to an existing roster, but gender or race swaps is not something I generally endorse. It's bad enough when they remove an established character and replace them with someone else, but it's worse when they just go "this character is now X". I honestly find that kind of demeaning to whatever demographic they're trying to appeal to, because it's basically saying that your racial, sexual or orientational identity is something we can just slap onto an existing character, rather than create a character with that identity group in mind.

As Stan Lee put it:
Stan Lee wrote:“I wouldn’t mind, if Peter Parker had originally been black, a Latino, an Indian or anything else, that he stay that way. But we originally made him white. I don’t see any reason to change that.”

I think the world has a place for gay superheroes, certainly. But again, I don’t see any reason to change the sexual proclivities of a character once they’ve already been established. I have no problem with creating new, homosexual superheroes.

It has nothing to do with being anti-gay, or anti-black, or anti-Latino, or anything like that. Latino characters should stay Latino. The Black Panther should certainly not be Swiss. I just see no reason to change that which has already been established when it’s so easy to add new characters. I say create new characters the way you want to. Hell, I’ll do it myself.”
"My heart is as light as a child's, a feeling I'd nearly forgotten. And by helping those in need, I will be able to keep that feeling alive."
- Captain Marvel SHAZAM! : Power of Hope (2000)

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Re: What's new with the big two: Marvel and DC Comics discussion thread.

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In other news, I'm not a fan of the "Blaming the 20th Century" vibe from those pages, nor am I really looking forward to this "year of villainy" thing DC is setting up. It feels like we JUST DID THAT a couple of years ago with that Forever Evil storyline where the Crime Syndicate and Lex Luthor were having this big fight that lasted forever.
"My heart is as light as a child's, a feeling I'd nearly forgotten. And by helping those in need, I will be able to keep that feeling alive."
- Captain Marvel SHAZAM! : Power of Hope (2000)

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Re: What's new with the big two: Marvel and DC Comics discussion thread.

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Tom King's run on Batman has been boring, self-indulgent, and destructive of the character.

Tom King's Superman: Up in The Sky is magnificent and a beautiful demonstration of the essence of this character.

Brian Michael Bendis' run on Superman is annoying, unnecessarily grim, and destructive of the character.

Brian Michael Bendis' Batman: Universal is incredibly fun and a beautiful demonstration of the essence of this character.

If there's a moral here, I don't know what it is.
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Re: What's new with the big two: Marvel and DC Comics discussion thread.

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Davies wrote: Fri Nov 08, 2019 8:50 pm Tom King's run on Batman has been boring, self-indulgent, and destructive of the character.

Tom King's Superman: Up in The Sky is magnificent and a beautiful demonstration of the essence of this character.

Brian Michael Bendis' run on Superman is annoying, unnecessarily grim, and destructive of the character.

Brian Michael Bendis' Batman: Universal is incredibly fun and a beautiful demonstration of the essence of this character.

If there's a moral here, I don't know what it is.
I'd say the moral is that writers get certain characters and not others. In some cases, writers ONLY get certain characters and no others.
"My heart is as light as a child's, a feeling I'd nearly forgotten. And by helping those in need, I will be able to keep that feeling alive."
- Captain Marvel SHAZAM! : Power of Hope (2000)

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Re: What's new with the big two: Marvel and DC Comics discussion thread.

Post by Voltron64 »

Davies wrote: Fri Nov 08, 2019 8:50 pm Tom King's run on Batman has been boring, self-indulgent, and destructive of the character.

Tom King's Superman: Up in The Sky is magnificent and a beautiful demonstration of the essence of this character.

Brian Michael Bendis' run on Superman is annoying, unnecessarily grim, and destructive of the character.

Brian Michael Bendis' Batman: Universal is incredibly fun and a beautiful demonstration of the essence of this character.

If there's a moral here, I don't know what it is.
Well the latter doesn't surprise me, Bendis has always excelled in street-level/urban supers.
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