I Think Marvel Have Reverted To The 1970’s?

[WebLurker]

I think I'm more interested in specific series being able to tell good stories on their own then having extensive ties to other series.

[stingray]

I think I'm more interested in specific series being able to tell good stories on their own then having extensive ties to other series.

This. Series like Robinson's Invaders and others were completely derailed by crossover events. Mid story arc the narrative goes off on a tangent because of this, and it just ruined the flow of the main tale. I find this really annoying. Back in the day, a character would guest star in anther book only if it made sense for both characters and was important to the story. Now they're shoe horned in in a blatant attempt to boost sales. This might work in the short term, but it's harmful to the ongoing success of a lot of comics.

[Witchfan]

In the 1970s, Marvel had Conan and Star Wars comics. They have those comics again.

[kilderkin]

No debate there though. Shooter was probably the best EIC marvel ever had. If you look at his era as EIC and how many all time great runs came out of it there is no denying it. Yes he could be an ass and pissed off some of the prima donna talent at the time, but those same guys who hate him now put out some of the best work of their careers under him. He was the boss and bosses should not be liked all the time. Joe Q was a well liked boss, but the work put out under his tenure was very up and down quality wise and late a lot because he was more interested in being a buddy than being a good boss.

I do think shooter made some mistakes, but generally I think he did a very, very good job

[kilderkin]

For me one of the things that I have felt missing from marvel in recent eras is a sense that I was visiting these characters each week/month

In a way sticking my nose into their lives and seeing a big world full of hero's interconnected

I feel that's been missing in a way, mostly due to shorter volumes and what I feel is poor editorial linkage, and the pressure to write to trade arcs where it feels to me like I'm only seeing a snippet of their day not the day itself ( not literally of course)

I'm fine with stand-alone or internal story's, but I always liked marvel because it felt like I was visiting the characters world

I haven't felt that for a long time now, at a guess I'd say at least the last five years

I think I feel that's coming back, and that makes it feel more like a mythos again

Which has a reminiscent feel of earlier eras

Which for me is mostly a good thing

[danielsan52]

Jessica and Carol are leading characters....

Just like the 70's

[Rosebunse]

I don't mind a good event, but I wish there was more coordination between writing teams. With Hickman's Secret Wars, it felt like the other creative teams knew the general routes things were taking and could plan their runs accordingly.

I feel like we're seeing that is happening again with War of the Realms. Most of the writers seem to be in real sync with each other, a lot of the books are already connected and referencing each other, and we're even seeing the X-Men carefully removed but not forgotten.

It is looking like the next few months are going to be very, very well for Marvel.

[Kaijudo]

Man, I HOPE they're embracing the 70s again. Back then, that decade gave us Luke Cage, Spider-Woman, Iron Fist, Shang-Chi, Howard the Duck, Werewolf by Night, Storm, Blade, Moon Knight, Ghost Rider, Nova, Damian Hellstrom, Punisher, Machine Man, Tigra, and some jerk named Wolverine.

If Marvel is at a point where they're going to be doing stories and introducing characters that have even half the shelf-life of those I mentioned above, then the next few years are going to be in really good shape.

[JKtheMac]

I just feel that the benefits to a "shared" universe are only:

A.) The sharing of broad narrative concepts. Mutants, Inhumans, Alien races, various shared power explanations, etc.

B.) The occasional guest appearance of a character.

The narrative concepts are just a helpful bag of tricks to pull from, and creates some familiarity even in books that may seem radically different. They can make certain thematic contradictions more palatable. The Fantastic Four, and Doctor Strange don't cross paths all the time but there's enough connective fiber to not have it be a big deal.

As much as you don't want to overdo it, oftentimes it can make for an interesting story to have a character from another title pop into a different one. They get to interact with characters they normally wouldn't, and face obstacles foreign to them.

Some books take things way too far, and wager a lot of enjoyment out of the assumption you know to care about the goings on in other books. Iron Man showing up in Spider-Man's book can be fun, but if the comic is borderline incomprehensible without reading Tony's book it's just not a very good issue. The worst is when two separate books rely so much on what the other builds that individually they're just nonsense. They may read alright as a whole, but if they read poorly by themselves you just have two mediocre comics.

Careful there. You are in danger of being rational. Some here seem to think the books actually are all in one story. They might be surprised to discover that isn’t how it works.

Taking my tounge out of my cheek for a bit. It is patently obvious that the seventies guest appearances were entertaining nonsense. Most of the time the characters were paper thin simplifications of the character in their own books. People like to think of these early days as being much better than today, but they weren’t. They were just different. The grand pompous late 80s hadn’t happened the cocaine fuelled, decadent 90s were a world away. The 70s were a great age mainly because things were about to take a nosedive and Marvel were a couple of decades away from dissapearing forever or even being subsumed into DC. If there has been a return to the 70s it is truely only an escape from the 90s.

[phantom1592]

No debate there though. Shooter was probably the best EIC marvel ever had. If you look at his era as EIC and how many all time great runs came out of it there is no denying it. Yes he could be an ass and pissed off some of the prima donna talent at the time, but those same guys who hate him now put out some of the best work of their careers under him. He was the boss and bosses should not be liked all the time. Joe Q was a well liked boss, but the work put out under his tenure was very up and down quality wise and late a lot because he was more interested in being a buddy than being a good boss.

Yep, from everything I've heard I agree 100%. All the complaints were typical 'boss' behavior and putting the company and the property before individual creators... which is 100% the right thing to do. You can't give writers free-reign to do whatever they want... because it's the properties that matter. Writers come and go... Marvel doesn't have Bendis anymore, but they do still have Daredevil and Spider-man. That's where the money is.

Most of the complaining I've heard about him... felt like whining. He did a LOT of good things and Marvel thrived under him.

Now?? it feels like the editors are afraid to say 'no... that's a terrible idea, we arent' doing that." Or my own personal pet peeve. "No... you can't have them do or say that, it's completely out of character."

[JKtheMac]

This. Series like Robinson's Invaders and others were completely derailed by crossover events. Mid story arc the narrative goes off on a tangent because of this, and it just ruined the flow of the main tale. I find this really annoying. Back in the day, a character would guest star in anther book only if it made sense for both characters and was important to the story. Now they're shoe horned in in a blatant attempt to boost sales. This might work in the short term, but it's harmful to the ongoing success of a lot of comics.

If there is any autobiography in his Airboy, and he says there is, then it is entirely possible Robinson’s Invaders was such a terrible mess because Robinson was such a mess. Either way it was just as much due to aimless writing as the events that made it so terrible. He didn’t have to use interminable exposition explaining where all the characters had been for example. If he had been on form he could have handled the events in his stride.

[Snoop Dogg]

Robinson's Invaders tied into one event, and that tie-in story was the absolute best part of the run. It just had a weak editor and was a generally mediocre book. You can clearly see the different ways they could have finished the story instead of setting up several different stories and just ending.

[My Two Cents]

We can only hope. The Seventies were the best era of comics. That’s a fact guys. Nothing to do with my age honest.

Not sure I could disagree
The seventies saw D C continuing there climb from the campiness most of the fifties and sixties show cased
and Marvel moved in front of D C with more personal and dramatic stories
Archie and Harvey continued to push there core characters like Archie and Betty and Veronica and Richie Rich and Casper and Sad Sack
while also Charlton was moving fast and furious with comics based on television cartoons like Flintstones and other genres like War and horror
(something D C and Marvel was also embracing)
Gold Key (along with Western bagging 3 for the grocery store) was making sure Bugs Bunny and Donald Duck and Little LuLu and many other
iconic characters continued to get into readers hands.
Than there was the giant treasury books Marvel and D C was publishing and the 100 page specials D C was attaching to many of there titles
in the early seventies and most of all and something that may never be duplicated there were many titles from all the above publishers
that continued from the January 1970 through December 1979 issue to issue with out being fully cancelled or re-launched.

This for sure was the era that cemented me into buying and collecting comics every week for decades
while it was recent things that came before what the publishers are putting out today that
pushed me away from buying new single issues and buying and reading collected editions featuring stories from the Golden Age
to (yes ) even present. I guess one of the few good things abut being around so long following comics, is that when things are
bad and than worst, one can and knows what old runs where good and seek them out.

[Mike_Murdock]

Personally, I think the 80s were better than the 70s as far as content because you get Miller on Daredevil, Simonson on Thor, arguably the height of Claremont on X-Men, New Mutants, and Excalibur, Louise Simonson with X-Factor, Marc Gruenwald on Captain America, Denny O'Neil on Iron Man. You don't get Starlin's Infinity Gauntlet, but you do have Starlin on Silver Surfer.

[Shadowcat]

Generally speaking individual titles are better when they don't have to worry too much about what some other creative team is doing with another batch of characters.

Debatable.