Marvel is returning to greatness... after 18 years

[darthblinx]

Dan Slott's Added Characters:

Mister Negative
Silk
Screwball
Anna Maria Marconi
Freak
Menace
Trauma
Jackpot
Komodo
Wraith (new female version)
Electro (new female version)
Carlie Cooper
Alpha
Cloud-9
MVP
Clash
Massacre
Overdrive
Baron von Blitzschlag
Hardball
Vin Gonzalez
Melee
Gauntlet
Southpaw
Armory
Squid
Power Broker (the new version)
Max Modell
---
Re-Envisioned Characters:
Superior Spider-man
Jackal

I also give Christos Gage a lot of credit for creating characters like Finesse and Ava Ayala

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catego...ers_by_creator
look at how many Fabian Nicieza contributed to the Marvel Universe.

Cool list. How many are still utilized in any capacity? 3?

[Michael Watkins]

Cool list. How many are still utilized in any capacity? 3?

how many characters that don't have Netflix tv shows or movies are utilized?

[Alan2099]

Miles Morales, Jessica Jones, Riri Williams. Elevating Jessica Drew and arguably Luke Cage.

Elevating Jessica Drew and in the process destroying Julia Carpenter who at that point had been Spider-woman for a much longer time.

Luke Cage he stripped of everything that actually made the character interesting in order to make him Generic Guy! The Man too cool to wear a costume while being on the FRIGGIN Avengers!

And Riri and Mile are just "black teenage version of the characters you already like except far more awesome than the old guys have ever been and everybody talks about how great they are!"

Bendis arguably added more the the Marvel Universe than anyone besides Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

You're not allowed to have an opinion ever again. The only thing of significance he added to Marvel was the "let's have characters sit around talking instead of actually doing things" story method.

[icctrombone]

90's had my 4th favorite run behind Lee and Kirby, Byrne, and Hickman. DeFalco and Ryan run with Franklin being made a teenager and then Reed "dying" and then Sue stepping up and leading the FF with added new character like Ant-Man (Scott Lang), Kristoff, and Lyja joining her, Ben and Johnny. They also did some parallel universe/time travel while looking for Reed.

I second this. I loved that version.

[Lukmendes]

Elevating Jessica Drew and in the process destroying Julia Carpenter who at that point had been Spider-woman for a much longer time.

Really? I haven't read much comics from those times, what did he do to Julia?

[Xalfrea]

And this is why I'm more of a fan of actual freaking characters than decades and eras.

[ed2962]

Elevating Jessica Drew and in the process destroying Julia Carpenter who at that point had been Spider-woman for a much longer time.

Luke Cage he stripped of everything that actually made the character interesting in order to make him Generic Guy! The Man too cool to wear a costume while being on the FRIGGIN Avengers!

And Riri and Mile are just "black teenage version of the characters you already like except far more awesome than the old guys have ever been and everybody talks about how great they are!"


You're not allowed to have an opinion ever again. The only thing of significance he added to Marvel was the "let's have characters sit around talking instead of actually doing things" story method.

Hadn't Julia been replaced by Mattie Franklin by that time?

[CaptCleghorn]

I don't really get why RiRi Williams is a favorite target for hate. While I could care less about the character (or the Iron Man comics in general, for that matter), doesn't there reach a point that if you don't like a series, just disengage and let it do its own thing? Hating on comics you don't read is really kinda petty.

Actually I've read the character in about three different issues. I don't have a real opinion of her based on that. I'm all for who she is (the teenager genius reverse-engineering armor I get), but I will NOT deal with a character who is the only other person I have ever heard of with my MIL's name. Sorry.

[numberthirty]

Speak for yourself. I was an adult during the 90’s and they were easily my favourite era of comics.

Politely, he isn't just speaking for himself.

There was...

- Plenty Of Garbage
- Some Easily Forgotten Stuff
- The Occasional Bit Of Solid Work

[numberthirty]

Again, one reader's opinion. I thought nineties X=Men were awful. The introduction of Cable and every other new character with shoulder pads and guns ruined the franchise for me. Not everyone likes the same thing, nor should they.

Man...

So much tail chasing that never amounted to anything but wasted paper and ink.

[Dementia5]

Politely, he isn't just speaking for himself.

There was...

- Plenty Of Garbage
- Some Easily Forgotten Stuff
- The Occasional Bit Of Solid Work

Politely, he said pretty clearly that “no comic fan who lived through the '90s as an adult would ever celebrate its return in any way“. I’m living proof that this is completely untrue. I disagree with his assessment, and yours.

[Jon-El]

I'm a 70's & 80's Marvel guy. I've read some trades from past 20 years but haven't bought monthly books. Just get my fix at the library. I honestly missed most of the 90's. I missed the X-Men craze. I read some issues and love the Cockrum / Byrne era but they were never big players when I read.

I'm happy buying old comics off eBay & getting trades from the library. I had my time & I don't need Marvel to recreate my favorite eras. I only hope current readers enjoy the books as much as I did growing up.

[WebLurker]

it's not its own thing. it was created to take the place of Iron Man's title; displacing Tony Stark. it, literally, required Stark's death to be a thing. in the interest of full disclosure, I have just as much contempt for Doctor Doom. there are plenty of titles that I do just ignore ex. Squirrel Girl. and I don't hate Riri. I defended her creation (anyone can check my old posts). but she's being trotted out as an example of Bendis' greatness. I don't see anything particularly creative or unique about her. am I missing something or is she, at the very least, super-genius African American girl # 3? and the other two are superior characters.

Fair enough. However, when certain critics stoop to being crass, entitled bullies, that crosses lines of acceptability.

[Venomous Mask]

Cool list. How many are still utilized in any capacity? 3?

Mr. Negative is the main villain in the new Spider-Man game.

[milton75]

I realise it’s more fun to shout “no, that sucks” into the void, but the truth is always somewhere boringly in the middle.

For all the hate the decade gets now, there were many decent runs in the 90s, and many fond memories to be had. For all that the X-Men were overblown by the mid-90s, Claremont and Lee were producing some great work and bringing thousands of new readers along for the ride. The industry would kill for a tenth of the number of new readers picking up books now. It’s a shame that it was a boom & bust cycle, but that’s life.

All that said, I think most would agree that by the tail end of the 90s things had gone pretty badly. The X-Men books had spiralled downhill around the time of Onslaught, with some really awful characters being added, and the number of unresolved Claremont plot ends was ridiculous (that may be no bad thing – Adam X being a Summers brother is probably not a good idea, and no-one at all cares about the Neo or Maggot).
Moreover, the runs that seem most commonly fondly harked back to, such as PADs work on Hulk and X-Factor, Ellis’s Daimon Hellstorm and Doom 2099, Davis’s Clandestine, etc., etc. had come to a close, and books had been cancelled or poorer writers had taken over. I would suggest that, in Marvel terms at least, the only real shining light of the late 90s was Thunderbolts.

So all that said, I have no real desire to “return to the 90s”. If we could learn from the good bits and excise the bad, I’d be happy. If I have to be critical of the last decade of Marvel I’d say it’s because we’ve not learned from past mistakes. The constant relaunches and #1s are, for me, simply a new symptom of the same lazy malaise that previously brought us all those 90s “limited edition” foil-wrapped covers and pointless holograms. It’s style over substance, and that does not keep new readers buying, and, crucially, disenfranchises loyal readers who have invested decade and vast sums of money in books.
Looking back at the 90s you can see where it went wrong; every book seemed to have a glossy cover and silly gimmick from time to time, but it was only those that had those boringly old-fashioned credentials of solid storytelling and decent artwork that maintained high sales.

By comparison, the years of Marvel Now and ANAD have seen too many books come and go. The tranche of #1s has allowed us to see in the cold light of day what will and will not survive in comics. Another relaunch of Spider-Man may annoy long-term readers, but as long as there is decent writing they’ll probably keep buying. On the flipside, the internal politics and wider marketing which has resulted in a slightly desperate rush to “push” certain new characters on an audience that did not ask for them will see books cancelled in short order, no matter how “important” the new character is portrayed as being. You write a book well, like Squirrel Girl or Ms Marvel and it hangs around. You don’t, like ***fill in the blanks yourself***, and it will plummet (yes, I do appreciate that there is a short-termism in figures, and that Marvel should have given some books longer).

For all that criticism of the last few years, I don’t agree that the last 18 years of Marvel has been poor, in fact there are many parts of it that are among my most cherished. I understand the hate some here have for Bendis & Co.’s use of Wanda, and the way that Disassembled and House of M went, but something did need to change with The Avengers. And it worked at the time. I actually thought most of what Marvel did in the first decade of the 2000s was pretty good. Even the crossovers, for all that they were too big, were decently plotted imo, and I loved that they shone a light on often overlooked characters and better opened up corners of the Marvel U. Avengers: The Initiative was a great example of how to involve D-list characters more, and I’m sad that there isn’t a current equivalent. DnA’s cosmic stories were fantastic, and I’d bite Marvel’s hand off for another book in that vein with them at the helm again. There have been solid highlights in more recent years too; Hawkeye and Superior Foes of Spider-Man were both a great read for me.


I’m rambling now so will leave it there. TL : DR – Some stuff is good, some stuff isn’t.