Should Marvel have rebooted after Hickman's Secret Wars

[theoneandonly]

even if you look at the original superteams most of them were darker and greyer prime example being avengers which consisted of the hulk a misunderstood tragic berserker monster, a billionaire playboy who was constantly under the threat of dying due to his injuries, a soldier out of time who was thirsting for vengeance for the loss of his comrade, a dilettante whose father was murdered tragically and who tried to hide her pain under a cheery facade not to mention a scientist who had more issues than you can count and finally a god who was banished to live among mortals. not exactly a stable happy professional team.

[SuperiorIronman]

They never should reboot. Ever.

The only thing I could even suggest is a spin-off line of comics similar to Ultimate but get everyone on board to make it as seamless as possible without delays, controversy, and most importantly new content. Slowly pushing it out the door kind of like a comic version of a blockbuster where we are introduced to this brand new world and not a hard reboot in the middle of everybody enjoying existing material. It's a million-billion dollar industry, DON'T TANK THAT.

[seldeguerande]

even if you look at the original superteams most of them were darker and greyer prime example being avengers which consisted of the hulk a misunderstood tragic berserker monster, a billionaire playboy who was constantly under the threat of dying due to his injuries, a soldier out of time who was thirsting for vengeance for the loss of his comrade, a dilettante whose father was murdered tragically and who tried to hide her pain under a cheery facade not to mention a scientist who had more issues than you can count and finally a god who was banished to live among mortals. not exactly a stable happy professional team.

Sure, but there is a difference in tone between that, and what happened since 2005. Not even a complete list, just basing myself on events:

- Heroes fighting heroes (civil war, world war hulk, avengers versus x-men, civil war II, schism, inhumans versus x-men and even the Hickman's run, which, in the end was all about tony versus cap)

- Heroes becoming criminals ( wanda killing the avengers in disassembled, the mutant race in house of M; cap being a nazi in secret empire; Gamora turning out to be a villain in infinity wars; strange losing his soul and the illuminatis doing atrocious things like creating bombs that will end being used to destroy ENTIRE universe; Namor taking part in this holocaust of universes; Bishop destroying the world over a thousand year, killing billions with the plague, nuclear and chemical eapons and the destruction of the amazonian forest, killed xavier and hope's mom and never ever got even arrested; Clint suddenly being pro-kill despite his character non-kill policy being ultra-canon; Ultron-pym; Tony stark killing an atlantean ambassador to get the US to war with Atlantis, war that will cause thousand of death in seattle; and also tony putting his own friends in jail; Peter Parker slling his soul to the devil; Scott Summers being called a Hitler for some reason; Wolverine becoming a mass-murder in enemy of state; Daredevil becoming a demon in Shadowland etc...)

- Heroes causing all the mess: Disassembled, house of M, secret invasion (counter-strike for the illuminati attack), world war hulk (same), dark reign (consequence of the pardon tony gave to Osborn and the creation of his state-sponsored team) and therefore Siege, Avengers vs X-men, nick fury in original sin etc..

- Heroes fighting warped up evil version of themselves instead of villains: on top of HoM and dark reign, it's also the premise of Hulked-out heroes in world war hulkS, secret invasion, fear itself, and axis.

And all that in around ten years. It's just too much.

[theoneandonly]

yes that may be so but the germ of the seed for the present stories was already present in the earlier stories which sprouted eventually.

[JKtheMac]

even if you look at the original superteams most of them were darker and greyer prime example being avengers which consisted of the hulk a misunderstood tragic berserker monster, a billionaire playboy who was constantly under the threat of dying due to his injuries, a soldier out of time who was thirsting for vengeance for the loss of his comrade, a dilettante whose father was murdered tragically and who tried to hide her pain under a cheery facade not to mention a scientist who had more issues than you can count and finally a god who was banished to live among mortals. not exactly a stable happy professional team.

You are twisting the content to make it sound dark. The Hulk wasn’t dark because it was clearly heightened and not particularly serious. The elements of his stories always contained light and shade. He is a wish fulfilment character for kids with anger issues.

Somebody having tragedy in their life isn’t necessarily dark. Tragedy is a normal part of life. It is how characters react and deal with it that would make them dark. Spider-Man isn’t a tragic character, he is an optimistic and always striving character who has to continually battle challenges in his life. His theme is not With Great Tragedy Comes Great Heroism!

It seems to be the meme of the moment that a character needs tragedy. That is just nonsense. It is just a reiteration of the old fallacy that drama comes from bad things happening.

Drama comes from conflict.

Maybe everyone has been watching too much Titans. I just watched it and it was indeed very dark. Oddly dated in its darkness.

[theoneandonly]

you made me laugh when you said the hulk wasn't particularly dark. he is the ultimate personification of a tragic hero beset by forces beyond his control feeling cursed by fate taking inspiration from the tragic story of dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. he wasn't just a wish fulfilment for angry children but also showed the dangers of repressing your issues as they fractured the psyche to the point of beyond repair. you might say that the rest are more typical of the superhero archetypes after you overlook their tragic origins but you can't say that the hulk is a particularly heroic figure though he did fight menaces more often than not despite being one himself.

[jackolover]

I suspect it is too late. The older fans rejected the shift towards a cast sprinkled with newer less cynical, less tragic, younger characters.

You could be right, as this ANAD has persisted a good few years now with no signs of a crisis on the horizon. The inconsistencies about the reasons for Civil War 2006 being “unsupervised teen super humans”, and, the Champions for example of 2019 running around unsupervised, makes the Marvel Universe ready to repeat the same mistakes, or look silly for ever being so restrictive in the SHRA. There are now more unsupervised young super humans in the ANAD than there ever were in Civil War 2006. If Marvel are swaying towards a mixture of of old classical super heroes and new diversity super heroes, the lesson to be learned is these kids self destruct, and that is what should be portrayed? That’s my feeling about it. Otherwise, let all kids go unsupervised by ordinary families as well. Kids are too immature. Of course they are going to self-destruct.

[jackolover]

When anyone says that there's been a darkening of Marvel characters in the modern age, it just makes me think that these people haven't read any Marvel before that time.

Or, certainly, that they don't comprehend that Marvel's heroes have always been psychologically darker and often grey in their morality.

I think because Silver and Bronze Age books automatically read as "innocent" to us now that it's hard to remember or understand that Marvel of the '60 and '70s was a jarring contrast to what superhero comics had been. The heroes were frequently jaded, angry, capable of making poor and sometimes selfish decisions. To portray Marvel characters in this way today is simply being true to the spirit of their conception. There has never been a time when the Marvel universe was an innocent place.

I don’t dispute Marvel heroes were dark in Silver or Bronze ages, but they were never sent to the Negative Zone then either, just forgiven and let get on with their fighting. Post 2005, that all changed. That’s what I’m getting at. A lot of heroes then became hunted animals instead of human. Took a while for authorities to change their mind about them, and after they did, it was too late for readers to see them in a good light.

[jackolover]

It should be pointed out that it was Marvel that helped push the Dark Age by killing off Gwen Stacy...

But didn't Stan Lee want one of the draws of Marvel to be that this was a darker world than what DC was doing? That these were characters who were often lost and confused about their place in their world?

Also, like, the Carol rape baby thing, that didn't happen recently. Then you had her own alcoholism, Tony's alcoholism, everything that happened to Angel, it's not like Blade was ever a happy man, the Silver Surfer...

So what are you saying? That the 2005-2015 era should be overlooked like the super heroes are just insensitive to female issues in Carols day, and move on? I think it took place was over a little more pronounced a period than the Carol incident embarrassment for the Avengers, (although the Avengers should have paid more dearly for that mistake).

[jackolover]

yes that may be so but the germ of the seed for the present stories was already present in the earlier stories which sprouted eventually.

The germ of the seed never seemed to do anything for 50 years, so I don’t think previous behaviour can be blamed here, as super heroes improved the older they got.

[JKtheMac]

you made me laugh when you said the hulk wasn't particularly dark. he is the ultimate personification of a tragic hero beset by forces beyond his control feeling cursed by fate taking inspiration from the tragic story of dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. he wasn't just a wish fulfilment for angry children but also showed the dangers of repressing your issues as they fractured the psyche to the point of beyond repair. you might say that the rest are more typical of the superhero archetypes after you overlook their tragic origins but you can't say that the hulk is a particularly heroic figure though he did fight menaces more often than not despite being one himself.

You may have noticed that J&H wasn’t about a guy who fought for the little guy or got angry about things that were wrong in society. J&H is dark, Hulk Smash is about anger. Most often righteous anger.

Just because at certain points in the ongoing story, including the current run, writers teased out the psychological issues or the horror, does not imply that the character is defined by these things.

Indeed we went through a couple of eras where darkness and seriousness were all comics were allowed to be about. It both defined the era of the direct market and almost killed the industry when the bubble burst. Some of us not only don’t like those eras of comics, we deliberately didn’t support them. Some grew up in these oh so serious times, and I feel both sympathy and regret that because of this many want their comics to be full of ultra serious themes and devoid of light amidst the shade.

We are currently in a very fascinating era. Where the serious themes and the lightness epitomised by the MCU are combined. Where the new golden age of TV, itself partly inspired by comics, are showing us how we can square the circle of character arcs and the old insidious idea of ‘The Illusion of Change’, leading us into comics with both dramatic depth and iconic gravity with a healthy amount of humour and an understanding of postmodern irony (how silly things can be serious and serious things can be silly).

Comics would be wise to embrace this new era wholeheartedly. For a good while they did embrace it, from around 2012 to now, but I feel we are just coming to a fork in the road. Some want to drift back towards an ultra serious tone and some want to continue towards a more light, more gold and silver age infused era.

[JKtheMac]

When anyone says that there's been a darkening of Marvel characters in the modern age, it just makes me think that these people haven't read any Marvel before that time.

Or, certainly, that they don't comprehend that Marvel's heroes have always been psychologically darker and often grey in their morality.

I think because Silver and Bronze Age books automatically read as "innocent" to us now that it's hard to remember or understand that Marvel of the '60 and '70s was a jarring contrast to what superhero comics had been. The heroes were frequently jaded, angry, capable of making poor and sometimes selfish decisions. To portray Marvel characters in this way today is simply being true to the spirit of their conception. There has never been a time when the Marvel universe was an innocent place.

I think this thesis is seriously flawed. The main problem being that until the last decade or so most of the people writing the history of comics were comic fans or close to the industry. A very skewed narrative emerged from this. One that doesn’t always take into account the wider context.

Indeed it reminds me of the arguments of the nineties which perhaps fortunately were not on the internet and so didn’t quite get as fractious as modern culture war disagreements. Where lots of comic fans wanted their comics to be serious so that they could justify their taste in a supposedly childish medium.

It just isn’t true that the Marvel revolution was built on moral issues or darkness. Instead it was informed by a more educated group of writers who were working in the cool and exciting era of postmodernism. Even those writers who were not university educated were surrounded by the new liberating movement in storytelling. What Lee et al were doing was infusing a traditionally low brow art form with the sensibilities of serious literature. They were not doing this in a vacuum. Science Fiction has been doing this since Sturgeon’s More Than Human and TV on both sides of the Atlantic were picking up on that. More serious literature was also blurring the boundaries between serious dramatic fiction and genre fiction, and historical fiction was also embracing the postmodern age.

The comic fan of the sixties and seventies would probably nestle their collection between their Pynchon novels and a copy of Dune or I Claudius. This was a brave new world indeed.

Fans like to claim the Silver Age was about the influx of science fiction and the Bronze age was about social issues. However, that was only a part of it. The specific science fiction being drawn upon was postmodern and often social or political. A genre with serious themes mixed with fantasy and non-serious elements. Also we tend to think of Tolkien as a deep and serious tome these days, yet it was also a part of this revolution of mixture and new combinations. All of these influences allowed Lee and Kirby et al to do things never seen before in comics. To take a huge postmodern spoon and mix up influences as disparate as Golden Age comics, pulp fiction, Victorian popularist novellas, high fantasy, science fiction and social commentary.

So it is not incorrect to say there was darkness in that process, but it is misrepresenting those times to suggest that was the most significant thing happening at the time. A time when Galactus was no longer just a cool giant space alien but also an analogy of a vengeful god passing judgment on a world defended by new-classical heroes with the powers of nature at their command. That is a joyful expression of the new storytelling potential.

[Prof. Warren]

I don’t dispute Marvel heroes were dark in Silver or Bronze ages, but they were never sent to the Negative Zone then either, just forgiven and let get on with their fighting. Post 2005, that all changed. That’s what I’m getting at. A lot of heroes then became hunted animals instead of human. Took a while for authorities to change their mind about them, and after they did, it was too late for readers to see them in a good light.

How many Spider-Man covers from the '60s had Spidey being hunted by the cops? Spidey was seen as a menace and was often hounded by law enforcement, goaded on by JJJ's personal vendetta against him. So the press and the police were out to get him.

[Prof. Warren]

I think this thesis is seriously flawed. The main problem being that until the last decade or so most of the people writing the history of comics were comic fans or close to the industry. A very skewed narrative emerged from this. One that doesn’t always take into account the wider context.

Indeed it reminds me of the arguments of the nineties which perhaps fortunately were not on the internet and so didn’t quite get as fractious as modern culture war disagreements. Where lots of comic fans wanted their comics to be serious so that they could justify their taste in a supposedly childish medium.

It just isn’t true that the Marvel revolution was built on moral issues or darkness. Instead it was informed by a more educated group of writers who were working in the cool and exciting era of postmodernism. Even those writers who were not university educated were surrounded by the new liberating movement in storytelling. What Lee et al were doing was infusing a traditionally low brow art form with the sensibilities of serious literature. They were not doing this in a vacuum. Science Fiction has been doing this since Sturgeon’s More Than Human and TV on both sides of the Atlantic were picking up on that. More serious literature was also blurring the boundaries between serious dramatic fiction and genre fiction, and historical fiction was also embracing the postmodern age.

The comic fan of the sixties and seventies would probably nestle their collection between their Pynchon novels and a copy of Dune or I Claudius. This was a brave new world indeed.

Fans like to claim the Silver Age was about the influx of science fiction and the Bronze age was about social issues. However, that was only a part of it. The specific science fiction being drawn upon was postmodern and often social or political. A genre with serious themes mixed with fantasy and non-serious elements. Also we tend to think of Tolkien as a deep and serious tome these days, yet it was also a part of this revolution of mixture and new combinations. All of these influences allowed Lee and Kirby et al to do things never seen before in comics. To take a huge postmodern spoon and mix up influences as disparate as Golden Age comics, pulp fiction, Victorian popularist novellas, high fantasy, science fiction and social commentary.

So it is not incorrect to say there was darkness in that process, but it is misrepresenting those times to suggest that was the most significant thing happening at the time. A time when Galactus was no longer just a cool giant space alien but also an analogy of a vengeful god passing judgment on a world defended by new-classical heroes with the powers of nature at their command. That is a joyful expression of the new storytelling potential.

While the Marvel revolution wasn't explicitly built on moral issues and darkness, it was based on bringing a newfound acknowledgment of reality and everyday issues to superhero fiction.

Along with that sense of reality came not just a self-aware humor about the conventions of superheroes but also a deeper emotional maturity. That naturally gave Marvel's characters a darker aspect in that they were capable of real psychological complexity. In short, Marvel took their character's inner lives seriously. That we see that continuing today is just following in the footsteps of what was already established, not introducing a darkness that wasn't rooted in the MU from the start.

[JKtheMac]

While the Marvel revolution wasn't explicitly built on moral issues and darkness, it was based on bringing a newfound acknowledgment of reality and everyday issues to superhero fiction.

Along with that sense of reality came not just a self-aware humor about the conventions of superheroes but also a deeper emotional maturity. That naturally gave Marvel's characters a darker aspect in that they were capable of real psychological complexity. In short, Marvel took their character's inner lives seriously. That we see that continuing today is just following in the footsteps of what was already established, not introducing a darkness that wasn't rooted in the MU from the start.

I think that depends what you mean by ‘seriously’. Postmodernism is serious business but it is inherently playful and not actually serious. So yes by including psychology they were introducing a touchstone of seriousness, but within the context of an inherently non serious medium. This is precisely where comics lost their way. The playfulness got lost amidst the seriousness some time in the late eighties and only really re-emerged with a vengeance in the recent past.