What's 'Important'?

[Fokken]

I am.

Thank you.

[Kuwagaton]

Question isn't "who's important?" Because yeah, I guess you'd take that one and the thread would end.

One of the legacies of Bendis' Avengers run was that certain books mattered more than others in the ongoing Marvel Universe wide mega plot at the time, be it House of M, Secret War, World War Hulk or Dark Reign.

With Marvel pubishing as many books as they are for 3.99 a pop, a book's importance is going to be a selling point.

There is only so much leeway a little quirky, individualistic book that is 3.99 can get.

And if you are a retailer, you'd take even a harder line about this kind of thing.

It's tough and not particularly sound business wise for retailers to try bucking the trend, yeah. It really comes down to the readers. The way comics are, with current prices, you'd think it would come down to the books fun enough to read more than once in a sitting than event stuff pretty much steeped in retcons that ironically might be reversed a year later.

[Vic Vega]

Question isn't "who's important?" Because yeah, I guess you'd take that one and the thread would end.



It's tough and not particularly sound business wise for retailers to try bucking the trend, yeah. It really comes down to the readers. The way comics are, with current prices, you'd think it would come down to the books fun enough to read more than once in a sitting than event stuff pretty much steeped in retcons that ironically might be reversed a year later.

Marvel trained its readers to want a certain thing, now its suffering somewhat because they have changed gears and the readers still want books like Bendis Dark Avengers and Avengers: Illuminati.

Heck, even I enjoyed World War Hulk, Dark Reign and Seige.

[brainwasher]

There is a seemingly big part of readers that enjoy character history, continuity and coherence with the past more than the actual stories. For these readers what's "important" is the overall story of the Marvel universe as a whole. A book like Uncanny Avengers is deemed not important because the hearth will be back so it won't impact the future of the other books and of the universe. I think it's the same type of readers that don't enjoy Fraction's Hawkeye because they feel is too different from past versions.

Personally I don't understand that attitude because I think what matter is the story, I don't care if you give me ten different Hawkeye and Spider Man in ten years if the stories are great, to me it's just ten different concepts evolving from the same creative problem (the hero without powers, the hero driven by guilt and responsibility).

That said, anyone has different tastes and likes different stuff and I can understand people been interested by this sort of meta story. Probably I am helped by the fact that I mostly enjoy books like the latest Hawkeye, Secret Avengers and She-Hulk so I rarely read anything important.

[HaveAtThee]

I would disagree with nothing changing - Cyclops today is in a very different place from Cyclops 20 years ago. The X-Men, in general, underwent a huge shift less than 15 years ago - Morrison's New X-Men opened up the school, which had a huge impact, and even WatXM, with the JGS's large number of students, is a direct result of Morrison filling the school.

For the Avengers, well, when has that franchise ever had major changes? The line-ups change, sure, and they still do. But the characters tend to have only temporary changes. Iron Man will always return to his default. Captain America, Thor, Hawkeye - they'll never have permanent changes. But there's always lots of temporary changes going on. Some work, some don't; that's always been the case, and I could point to plenty of examples of older stuff that was bad.

Sure, there are some temporary and/or minor changes that occur, but generally in the superhero sphere things tend to revert back to the norm. Not saying that stories can't be enjoyable this way, but it removes the aura of suspense when you know that sooner or later most "major" changes (specifically event stories) are mostly ignored or forgotten months later.

Plus, to your point about the X-Men, there seemingly haven't been many structural changes to the mutants of Marvel. Despite literally streamlining their ranks, they're still a persecuted and hated minority trying to either achieve equality with the rest of society or at least advance their own agenda. You could argue that's their most compelling trait as a group, for sure, but it's a rather outdated theme in my book (just my opinion of course, not trashing the X-Men at all).

[krazijoe]

The most important thing to me is Continuity. Across all books and across all time periods. That is my pet peeve.

[Tiamatty]

Sure, there are some temporary and/or minor changes that occur, but generally in the superhero sphere things tend to revert back to the norm. Not saying that stories can't be enjoyable this way, but it removes the aura of suspense when you know that sooner or later most "major" changes (specifically event stories) are mostly ignored or forgotten months later.

Sure, but it's always been that way. How many instances can you think of throughout the whole history of Marvel where a character underwent some kind of change that wasn't reversed within 5 years? I can only think of a handful. Iron Man deciding not to sell weapons, which was actually a pretty minor change that didn't stop him from being rich. Iron Man's alcoholism and decision to stop drinking. Spider-man leaving school, Gwen Stacy's death, Spider-Man getting married (and even the marriage has been ended, but it was done with the intention of it being a permanent change in his status quo). A handful of characters going from villain to hero. And . . . that's about it.

The lack of real change is not a recent phenomenon. It goes back to the start. So my objection is stating that nothing in the past 20 years has been important. How important was the Armour Wars? How important was the whole Secret Empire plot in Captain America? How important was "This Man, This Monster"? A lot of classic stories, held up as being among the greatest, didn't really change anything. They're named as important because they're considered good stories. And if a story being good is enough to declare it important, then there's still plenty of great stories still being told. Kieron Gillen's Journey Into Mystery was brilliant, I'm loving what Bendis is doing on the X-titles, Mighty Avengers has fantastic writing (despite the shittiness of Land's art) - there's a whole lot of great comics being made right now. So if we use quality as an indication of importance, there's a lot of important comics being made today, and there have been for a long time. And if we gauge importance based on whether it really changed anything, then very, very few classic stories were particularly important, either. Some of them would only be important because they introduced a particularly popular character.

So, yeah, I reject the idea that comics today are any worse than the comics of the past. I feel like that's an argument born of nostalgia, and I dislike nostalgia.

[brainwasher]

The most important thing to me is Continuity. Across all books and across all time periods. That is my pet peeve.

So why you still read Marvel comics?

[John Ossie]

So why you still read Marvel comics?

Lol. Touche. I gave up trying to follow continuity from Marvel years ago.

[Marvell2100]

I guess what's important is the impact that the story has on the character and the reader, does it change him/her/them/us in any significant way. It doesn't have to have a major impact on the rest of the comic universe in which it occurs but it should be recognized as some sort of significant change.

[emac1790]

Marvel trained its readers to want a certain thing, now its suffering somewhat because they have changed gears and the readers still want books like Bendis Dark Avengers and Avengers: Illuminati.

Heck, even I enjoyed World War Hulk, Dark Reign and Seige.

If a reader let Marvel "train" them to read/want certain things then that reader is a fool. And fools are soon parted from their money. You train a dog to be housebroken. How the hell would someone train a person to read/want something they don't like/enjoy? Don't blame Marvel for that. Blame the readers that keep buying books that they complain about for the usual reasons ("I'm emotionally invested in the character(s), "I have a complete run, I can't stop now"/"I hate having holes in my collection", "It's important"). This is all make believe. A comic book is only important if you feel it is. If you let Marvel's (or DC's for that matter) marketing tell you what book to buy, you deserve whatever happens to you. Vote with your wallets.

[hawkeyefan]

What's important is that you enjoy the books. Anyone who feels compelled to buy something because it's "important" is being affected by marketing. That's the main reason for continuity...to convince readers to buy more books.

If a book sounds interesting to you, then buy it. If it doesn't, then don't. There is nothing that happens in any of these books that you can't find out about on the internet the day it comes out. So no, there are no books that are require reading in that sense.

[Carabas]

What's important is that you enjoy the books. Anyone who feels compelled to buy something because it's "important" is being affected by marketing. That's the main reason for continuity...to convince readers to buy more books.

Couldn't have put it better.

The only thing that is important is that you like what' you're reading.
To me Hawkeye is a massively more important book than something like AvX, and Image books like Fatale and Lazarus are massively more important than all of Marvel and DC put together.

[coveredinbees]

Of course you're supposed to read the ones you like rather than the important crossover books. But sometimes it would be nice if the minis or the short lived solos, that are great stories, were more important. If those stories got the same weight as SUMMER EVENT, maybe SUMMER EVENT would be a little better, richer. It doesn't matter, but it would fun to read decent events. Recognizing other stories as existing is part of that. But nothing really matters.

[StoneGold]

That's the main reason for continuity...to convince readers to buy more books.

That's the main reason for anything.