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  1. #31
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mike_Murdock View Post
    I'm not convinced Rage was shown to be in the wrong. I thought that was very much left ambiguous and was a major catalyst for Sam Wilson's actions after that point.
    No, he was not shown to be in the wrong. And yes, what happens to him spurs Sam's actions afterwards.

    Spencer's Cap run and SE were fantastic. A lot of kneejerk reactions kept it from being better appreciated at the moment but it will continue to be re-discovered, now that it can be read in full without readers freaking out that it's going to "ruin" Captain America and all the other nonsense that some fanboys were bleating about at the time.

    The criticisms against it were always hollow. Mostly they came from fans who think they can write trying to suggest the "better" version of the story. Of course their suggestions as to how Cap and SE "should" be written were almost always were based on a complete misreading of the story itself. If you go back and read the Cap and SE threads that were active at the time the books were coming out, I know there was at least one poster who kept slamming it on the basis that they were interpreting it as a story about mind control and how Cap should be able to snap out of it and this character should do such and such a thing to wake him up and Steve or Sam should do this or that and always insisting that, you know, there's no way that Cap isn't being ruined forever by this but, of course, Spencer wasn't telling a story about mind control at all, he hadn't ruined Cap in the least, and none of these suggestions had any relevance to where the actual story was going.

    I think there's a group of fans who just aren't equipped to deal with long term serialized storytelling and can't stand to be held in suspense for a lengthy period of time. They try to anticipate where the story's going, do it badly, make all kinds of erroneous assumptions, and then take it out on the story itself. And even when it's over and all their hand-wringing has proved to be for nothing, instead of learning the lesson of "well, I really should let a story play out all the way before losing my mind," they just stay angry about it and go on to do the same thing with some other arc.

    But I'm glad Spencer's Cap is a storyline that people came come to from a different vantage point now, away from the heated discussions and reactions that may have colored it at the time, and really appreciate what he was doing.

  2. #32
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    Quote Originally Posted by Prof. Warren View Post
    I think there's a group of fans who just aren't equipped to deal with long term serialized storytelling and can't stand to be held in suspense for a lengthy period of time. They try to anticipate where the story's going, do it badly, make all kinds of erroneous assumptions, and then take it out on the story itself. And even when it's over and all their hand-wringing has proved to be for nothing, instead of learning the lesson of "well, I really should let a story play out all the way before losing my mind," they just stay angry about it and go on to do the same thing with some other arc.

    But I'm glad Spencer's Cap is a storyline that people came come to from a different vantage point now, away from the heated discussions and reactions that may have colored it at the time, and really appreciate what he was doing.
    Err, what? Long term, serialized storytelling is 90% of what comics are.

    The problem with Spencer is that he rarely progressed forward. The Jack Flag matter, for instance, dragged on for several issues and ended on an utter cop out.

  3. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by jackolover View Post
    So, are you saying Reed Richards can’t put the ANAD universe back together like the old 616, and it’s a faulty, unsanctified universe, where Cap isn’t sacred, Dr Strange’s Magic is degraded, and, Asgard magic is so disrupted Father Odin is ineffective now?
    This has nothing to do with anything.

    If you brought this theory up to Hickman or Spencer, the reaction would surely be "what the fu*k are you even talking about?"

    You are reading way, way, way too much into the restructuring of the MU at the end of Secret Wars.

    It was just a way to continue telling stories because, you know, the MU still has to exist for that. It has nothing to do with its recreation being flawed or "unsanctified."

    The Marvel universe is a fictional place. A story could be told in which it was reconstructed by the Impossible Man and it would be every bit as sanctified as by any other fictional means.

  4. #34
    Uncanny Member XPac's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Cool Thatguy View Post
    Err, what? Long term, serialized storytelling is 90% of what comics are.

    The problem with Spencer is that he rarely progressed forward. The Jack Flag matter, for instance, dragged on for several issues and ended on an utter cop out.
    I think to a degree that tends to happen when you have a writer who is basically guranteed a lengthy run. We saw issues like that with Bendis and Hickmans Avengers run. If you're not worried about being cancelled after 6 issues, you can drag things out for as long as you feel you need to. You can drop something that doesn't see fruitation till next year if you know your book will still be around by then.

  5. #35
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Cool Thatguy View Post
    Err, what? Long term, serialized storytelling is 90% of what comics are.
    Yes, but comics used to be told in shorter arcs. One and dones, two-parters, maybe the occasional longer storyline. But when you have storylines that stretch out over the course of a year or more, some fans clearly are not equipped to stay the course without freaking out.

    Quote Originally Posted by The Cool Thatguy View Post
    The problem with Spencer is that he rarely progressed forward. The Jack Flag matter, for instance, dragged on for several issues and ended on an utter cop out.
    No, he constantly progressed forward.

    Just because not every subplot advanced the way you think it should have doesn't mean that he copped out on anything.

    A lot of fans seize on some aspect of a story as being of particular importance and hold it against the writer when they don't explore it in the way they believe it should have been.

  6. #36
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    Quote Originally Posted by XPac View Post
    I think to a degree that tends to happen when you have a writer who is basically guranteed a lengthy run. We saw issues like that with Bendis and Hickmans Avengers run. If you're not worried about being cancelled after 6 issues, you can drag things out for as long as you feel you need to. You can drop something that doesn't see fruitation till next year if you know your book will still be around by then.
    Yeah, but you still have to progress the damn plot.

    Jack Flag subplot was basically

    Red Skull: Kill him!

    Cap: Don't wanna!

    Rinse, repeat. And when it was done, it was forgotten (hell, where did Free Spirit go?")

    Look at how Johns developed Blackest Night, vs how Spencer developed Secret Empire. Johns moved hs pieces into place, while Spence just spun his wheels.

  7. #37
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    Quote Originally Posted by Prof. Warren View Post
    No, he was not shown to be in the wrong. And yes, what happens to him spurs Sam's actions afterwards.

    Spencer's Cap run and SE were fantastic. A lot of kneejerk reactions kept it from being better appreciated at the moment but it will continue to be re-discovered, now that it can be read in full without readers freaking out that it's going to "ruin" Captain America and all the other nonsense that some fanboys were bleating about at the time.

    The criticisms against it were always hollow. Mostly they came from fans who think they can write trying to suggest the "better" version of the story. Of course their suggestions as to how Cap and SE "should" be written were almost always were based on a complete misreading of the story itself. If you go back and read the Cap and SE threads that were active at the time the books were coming out, I know there was at least one poster who kept slamming it on the basis that they were interpreting it as a story about mind control and how Cap should be able to snap out of it and this character should do such and such a thing to wake him up and Steve or Sam should do this or that and always insisting that, you know, there's no way that Cap isn't being ruined forever by this but, of course, Spencer wasn't telling a story about mind control at all, he hadn't ruined Cap in the least, and none of these suggestions had any relevance to where the actual story was going.

    I think there's a group of fans who just aren't equipped to deal with long term serialized storytelling and can't stand to be held in suspense for a lengthy period of time. They try to anticipate where the story's going, do it badly, make all kinds of erroneous assumptions, and then take it out on the story itself. And even when it's over and all their hand-wringing has proved to be for nothing, instead of learning the lesson of "well, I really should let a story play out all the way before losing my mind," they just stay angry about it and go on to do the same thing with some other arc.

    But I'm glad Spencer's Cap is a storyline that people came come to from a different vantage point now, away from the heated discussions and reactions that may have colored it at the time, and really appreciate what he was doing.
    This is also my understanding of the controversy too, I think people forget how people were freaking out about Dan Slott's Superior Spider-Man run and how they scream it's one of the best runs ever and clamor for more.

    I hate to sound like a cliche but fans nowadays have zero patience for a story to play out. I mean the same thing is happening right now with King's Batman run, he was lauded as the second coming but now that he has a 100 issue run of Batman which is only half done people are screaming for his head.

    To me it's like damn, just wait and see how the story plays out. Books only come out once a month or if you're lucky twice a month and I understand that Spencer's run was mired with delays and shaky art because of it I think if we as a community took our respective fingers off the twitter button the comic fandom would be better for it. Some of my favorite writers have left mainstream superhero comics because of this exact same problem.

  8. #38
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Cool Thatguy View Post
    Yeah, but you still have to progress the damn plot.

    Jack Flag subplot was basically

    Red Skull: Kill him!

    Cap: Don't wanna!

    Rinse, repeat. And when it was done, it was forgotten (hell, where did Free Spirit go?")

    Look at how Johns developed Blackest Night, vs how Spencer developed Secret Empire. Johns moved hs pieces into place, while Spence just spun his wheels.
    The Jack subplot was a test to see how far Steve would go in compromising someone he cares about for the cause. Him hesitating and then begrudgingly accepting that he has to die is a million miles away from sending Buck to die with a straight face, sending Rick to die, bombing cities of civies, and declaring war. His arc's trajectory is down.
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  9. #39
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    Quote Originally Posted by charliehustle415 View Post
    This is also my understanding of the controversy too, I think people forget how people were freaking out about Dan Slott's Superior Spider-Man run and how they scream it's one of the best runs ever and clamor for more.

    I hate to sound like a cliche but fans nowadays have zero patience for a story to play out. I mean the same thing is happening right now with King's Batman run, he was lauded as the second coming but now that he has a 100 issue run of Batman which is only half done people are screaming for his head.

    To me it's like damn, just wait and see how the story plays out. Books only come out once a month or if you're lucky twice a month and I understand that Spencer's run was mired with delays and shaky art because of it I think if we as a community took our respective fingers off the twitter button the comic fandom would be better for it. Some of my favorite writers have left mainstream superhero comics because of this exact same problem.
    When you really look at it all in hindsight, it honestly didn't last that long too. The Hydra Cap status quo lasted just about 1 year and 4 months, which oddly enough is the exact same amount of time the Superior Spider-Man status quo occurred. And counting the Sam book for the run as a whole, its a 2 year story, which is much shorter than alot of other writers' runs, like Bendis, Hickman, etc.

  10. #40
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    I don't think the comparison is quite the same between Superior Spider-man and Spencer's Captain America.

    Superior Spider-man you can read the ending and get a complete understanding of what is happening because Green Goblin has little to do with what is happening besides providing a final boss and any good will that is done with Otto is indeed undercut by Otto having lied to Anna Maria, Killing Peter, and cooking the planet some year earlier. Superior Spider-man also noting that it was very controversial at the time, it as a result got a lot of attention to the point you can make the argument that it was distracting people from other books like Venom and Scarlet Spider whom had been doing much the same thing; villain getting a heroic lease on life. Seeing as Superior was the main book and made news, you can imagine what survived.

    Superior Spider-man at it's core basically runs on controversy, being able to read it at virtually any point and jump to Volume 3, the spin-off's doing much of the heavy lifting for Otto's character, and Norman Osborn having **** all to do with anything but Green Goblin is in Amazing Spider-man 2 so he has to be in it. Also worth noting is how Superior Spider-man team-up actually had to devote time to explaining why Norman and Otto give a **** but whatever.

    Look, I like the second half of Superior Spider-man but lets not pretend it didn't have some massive issues.
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  11. #41
    Mighty Member capandkirby's Avatar
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    I knew the minute the real Steve showed up in the first issue of Secret Empire, in the Vanishing Point, what Spencer was doing. So even though Steve is my favorite character, my own displeasure with Secret Empire had nothing to do with the outrage going around twitter at the time or with Stevil or Sam’s characterization. I disliked Secret Empire for its treatment of its supporting characters and what I saw as often one dimensional and stereotypical storytelling. This is my opinion, it’s not going to change, so don’t bother arguing with me about it.

    As for the controversy surrounding it, I once put this in another thread so I’ll put it here, these are the reasons Secret Empire was divisive with the general audience...

    Secret Empire wouldn't have been half as divisive if:

    a) they didn't market it as 'oh yes, this is the real Cap, not a copy' when in reality, it was a copy.
    b) they didn't send pro-Hydra paraphernalia to the shops to promote it.
    c) Donald Trump didn't win the presidency and Charlotteville didn't happen. In other words, Marvel used extraordinarily bad timing for a story like that, and made the mistake of using a hero synonymous with WW2 to do it, who was created by two Jewish creators to be the world's first SJW.
    d) They used a character made wildly popular by the MCU. Those of us who have been reading comics forever just kind of rolled our eyes and went, 'this will be ret-conned before the run is even done'. But the bulk of the protesting came from non-comic readers who aren't familiar with how comics work.

    ...having said all this, Spencer did NOT deserve death threats (no one does). The hate heaped on him was unwarranted and awful. As a long-time comics reader I got second-hand embarrassment over how over-the-top people reacted to this story.

  12. #42
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    Quote Originally Posted by Snoop Dogg View Post
    The Jack subplot was a test to see how far Steve would go in compromising someone he cares about for the cause. Him hesitating and then begrudgingly accepting that he has to die is a million miles away from sending Buck to die with a straight face, sending Rick to die, bombing cities of civies, and declaring war. His arc's trajectory is down.
    Except that he never did anything with Jack. Jack was polite enough to die on his own and never be brought up again.

    All that stuff you cite really didn't snowball, so much as happen immediatly one after the other. He went from getting wobbly about Jack to killing Rick, bombing a city etc in the blink of an eye.

    And even then, Spencer trying to cover his rear by saying the Hydra council forced his hand in these decisions.

    Spencer had a plot that was well beyond his ability to execute in a decent fashion. That is probably why we still don't know what Elsa's deal is

  13. #43
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    Quote Originally Posted by jackolover View Post
    I suppose what was wrong with Spencer’s Cap Sam and Hydra Steve, was it was depressingly negative in both cases. Sam was very poorly treated as a Cap because of racism. Hydra Cap was an idea about portraying Steve Rogers the opposite to what he stood for - freedom. As a tactic by Hydra it was a huge success. It just left America without a symbol for their achievement as a nation, and that’s very depressing. It means people in the Marvel Universe were so ready to believe that Steve Rogers would do something like this to them. It took Sam Wilson to stop Hydra Cap, because America wouldn’t. And Still Sam Wilson is disillusioned.
    I suspect Sam giving up the shield was executive meddling and Spencer intended his run to end with Sam and the real Steve both being Cap (Marvel Legacy #1 seemed to show a duplicate of the shield). After all, he did create a new Falcon, and during Secret Empire, a second, patriotic themed, sidekick was given to Sam as well.
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  14. #44
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    Quote Originally Posted by MichaelC View Post
    It feels like they used Sam the way they use Green Arrow on TV: as a version of Batman who can make mistakes. They wanted a more human Captain America. Steve Rogers isn't really allowed to be human.
    You just can’t help yourself, can you? You go onto every single post you can find to make a dig at Steve. I think you’re more obsessed with him than I am, and I’ve been reading the character since Ronald Reagan was still in office. Must burn your craw that not only is Coates’ Cap run outselling Slott’s Iron Man, but that no matter how much you protest and spill your vitriol, Steve continues to be beloved and adored. He’s not going anywhere. He will always be a huge part of the MU. IMO you’re wasting your energy hating something that will never change.

  15. #45
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Cool Thatguy View Post
    Except that he never did anything with Jack. Jack was polite enough to die on his own and never be brought up again.

    All that stuff you cite really didn't snowball, so much as happen immediatly one after the other. He went from getting wobbly about Jack to killing Rick, bombing a city etc in the blink of an eye.

    And even then, Spencer trying to cover his rear by saying the Hydra council forced his hand in these decisions.

    Spencer had a plot that was well beyond his ability to execute in a decent fashion. That is probably why we still don't know what Elsa's deal is
    He was going to kill Jack. He had the needle and was about to do it. He crossed the line and then learned he didn't have to. And he still murdered him anyway. But as the run goes on, those kind of decisions become easier for him.

    We do know what Elisa's deal is. She's a creation of Kobik's new Hydra history who fulfills the Secret Warriors Madame Hydra role on the council and who's purpose was to help orchestrate the creation of the new reality.
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