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  1. #31
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    Quote Originally Posted by jackolover View Post
    Are we to believe, because of the sudden Secret Wars #1 deaths without requisite acknowledgement, that the whole Hickman run of Avengers purposely desensitised the book. Because I got a very distanced feeling to the characters from Hickman, and if SW told us why, then I suppose Hickman had to tell it this way.
    I don't think it's as cut-and-dried as all that. During his time at Marvel, Hickman has gravitated toward characters who pursue their missions at the expense of their human side, people like Reed Richards and Tony Stark and Dr. Doom and Evil Reed Richards, but not to the exclusion of more identifiable characters. His Spider-Man is warm, but more low-key than usual; we can see him struggling to put on a brave face for the civilians in Secret War, and his presence dilutes the gloom after Johnny Storm's disappearance in Hickman's run on FF. The done-in-one stories during his Avengers run give us relatively expressive backstories for characters like Smasher, Hyperion, and Starbrand. The emphasis is on grand schemes and big ideas, especially in New Avengers, but it's not quite fair to say that the human element is shoved into the distance. It might look that way because Hickman expresses character through plot more often than he deals with characters in Bendis/Whedon style throwaway scenes. It's a given that Secret Wars #1 is not a character-oriented issue despite a few nice character beats; almost everyone is displaying selflessness in the face of almost certain death, which doesn't exactly make for a diverse emotional tapestry, but it fits the story he's telling in this first issue.

  2. #32
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sardorim View Post
    I disagree. This makes RR blush with such a huge death toll that happened in an instant.

    At least RR kept his Uncanny Avengers mostly self-contained and he reversed things. Here is no such thing.

    It's basically Marvel erasing everyone, saving the few they like and then making altered versions (For those that even get that) of the erased to suit what they want without having to deal with canon or history.

    The lead-up is also completely horrid if you weren't already an Avenger reader and understandably Spider-Men, Cosmic, Inhuman and X-Men fans have every right to be displeased that the characters they like and read about are now gone forever due to an unrelated book.
    This response is making a lot of assumptions about what happens next. We know that the Marvel Universe will continue in a different form, and we know that many familiar characters died in this issue, but we have no idea what will be restored and what will be revised. The press releases are telling us that nothing will be the same, but they always say that. This event may be closer to Uncanny Avengers than you are anticipating.

  3. #33
    Incredible Member Bunai's Avatar
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    Grabbed a copy today.
    ;_; missed #0 though.


    Anyway. Lovely art, pretty dramatic build.
    The only downside I had with it is that many of the powerful heroes were (supposedly) wiped out so easily. Like Hickman just nerfed everyone at the last minute for drama.
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  4. #34
    Ultimate Member jackolover's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Darth Kal-el View Post
    I read all of avengers and New avengers but not his ultimate stuff so I understood 95 percent of everything but I do feel sorry for those that had not because Marvel and Hickman both said you didn't need to and that was a flat out lie. The beginning scene with Doom would make no sense without NA and neither would the incursions, Ultimate Reed, the cabal or why 1610 was attacking 616. Also no one would know Tony and Steve were dead because Stark turned out evil. They lied about accessibility. Never will trust marvel again
    You hit on a point I hadn't realised. Tony and Steve don't appear in this issue. They aren't on the cover and they don't get mentioned in the cast photos. Okay, SW isn't strictly an Avengers book, but it could be considered as such because all that happened in those books set this up. We could be bemused that this story didnt at least give the status of two of the big 3, and to exclude Odinson from this as well, there is the big 3 all missing. It may not be pertinent to what Secret Wars is trying to get to (because maybe SW was just a madeningly quick gallop towards oblivion), that these 3 Avengers aren't in the book, but it may have been worth mentioning it in a preview page. "Cap and Tony are busy fighting on the ground, and Odinson got killed fighting Beyonders, (but Hyperion escaped)".

  5. #35
    Ultimate Member jackolover's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cryptid View Post
    I don't think it's as cut-and-dried as all that. During his time at Marvel, Hickman has gravitated toward characters who pursue their missions at the expense of their human side, people like Reed Richards and Tony Stark and Dr. Doom and Evil Reed Richards, but not to the exclusion of more identifiable characters. His Spider-Man is warm, but more low-key than usual; we can see him struggling to put on a brave face for the civilians in Secret War, and his presence dilutes the gloom after Johnny Storm's disappearance in Hickman's run on FF. The done-in-one stories during his Avengers run give us relatively expressive backstories for characters like Smasher, Hyperion, and Starbrand. The emphasis is on grand schemes and big ideas, especially in New Avengers, but it's not quite fair to say that the human element is shoved into the distance. It might look that way because Hickman expresses character through plot more often than he deals with characters in Bendis/Whedon style throwaway scenes. It's a given that Secret Wars #1 is not a character-oriented issue despite a few nice character beats; almost everyone is displaying selflessness in the face of almost certain death, which doesn't exactly make for a diverse emotional tapestry, but it fits the story he's telling in this first issue.
    Plot expediency at the cost of character. I couldn't immerse myself in the Avengers characters, because the story was the more powerful element. I suppose it just stood out to me because I was educated on Bendis Avengers, so yes, it's a problem of expectation on my part. But it appeared like the Avengers clocked on for the mission and just phoned it in. I'm just wondering was the "Avengers" book powerful enough to push aside character moments but leave it to Avengers Assembled to fill in the blanks?

    Builders came first, with Abyss and ExNihilo, so planet Bombs were a pretty serious, large scale, disaster, so everybody was on the clock.

    Then came Infinity, also so vast the Avengers were deligated to the background for a while.

    Lastly, All New Marvel Now, where Original Sin led into Time Runs Out. The concepts were hard to absorb, so things concentrated on writing explanations, and then, the construction of the future, and left little room to humanise the story.

    Secret Wars arrives and the haste with which it all goes down leaves little room for the characters to show any reaction and then they are gone. You draw a timeline from Avengers #1 to Avengers#44, and it was pointing directly towards a brick wall from the get go, called final Incursion, where the team is thrown against it. It's like you didn't need to know which Avengers were in it, just that the situation was so bad, that was more important.

    Last Days will fill in some of those holes, but I can see how the Hickman script had to push ever forward maybe because of lack of time and space. It could be as simple as that.
    Last edited by jackolover; 05-08-2015 at 01:31 AM.

  6. #36
    Waiting to Take Over... Charles J. Baserap's Avatar
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    It's amazing so many people had trouble with this book when maybe 5 minutes could have solved that. Now I get the argument that one shouldn't HAVE TO do some research, sure, but literally it takes five minutes to expand upon the blurb in the beginning that lays it out there for you along with the cast of characters and where they're from (incursions are happening, two earths left, both about to collide).

    I have a 5 year old who is going to be 6 in July. She and I read Original Sin together and read Thor, Spider-Girl, Justice League and the Star Wars books among others. She never read anything by Hickman. I explained to her what was going on before we sat to read SW #1 because she wanted the issue when she saw my copy. Now, yeah, at 5 she's not going to get every little nuance, but if I could explain it to a 5 year old in 5 minutes and have her enjoy it and actually gasp when characters got shot or when the worlds collided at the end, then anyone here saying it was impossible and so hard needs to step back and reevaluate that maybe comics like these aren't for them. I hear Highlights Magazine still gets published.

  7. #37
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sardorim View Post
    Agreed.

    If you weren't reading the Avengers up to this point then you're going to have a rude awakening when all those other characters you were reading about turn up erased and maybe getting a battleworld imposter.



    I disagree. This makes RR blush with such a huge death toll that happened in an instant.

    At least RR kept his Uncanny Avengers mostly self-contained and he reversed things. Here is no such thing.

    It's basically Marvel erasing everyone, saving the few they like and then making altered versions (For those that even get that) of the erased to suit what they want without having to deal with canon or history.

    The lead-up is also completely horrid if you weren't already an Avenger reader and understandably Spider-Men, Cosmic, Inhuman and X-Men fans have every right to be displeased that the characters they like and read about are now gone forever due to an unrelated book.
    Jesus. Did no one read All-New Avengers?

  8. #38
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    I have to say this issue felt rather average to me. I haven't read Hickman's Avengers/New Avengers but I didn't feel lost reading Secret Wars #1, quite the opposite. While I'm glad that this didn't turn into an endless celebration of two-page spreads, the story felt a bit lacking in terms of scope with the entire multiverse coming to an end. Most of the deaths lacked impact in my opinion because of how casual several of them were treated. I'm not buying into the deaths of Sue, Ben etc., their return either on Battleworld or later is a no-brainer. I'm also wondering how Miles made it from being caught in an incursion at the end of Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man #12 to being in the vicinity of the launch of The Maker's life raft, has this been explained in any previous issue? Can't say I'm a fan of the multiple pages consisting of caption boxes only, seems like wasted space because the captions could have been arranged on a single page as well. Ribic's art is a real treat for the most part, however I'm not a fan of his interpretation of Thing.

    I've grown tired of hero vs. hero events and considering this is the overall premise for Secret Wars, I doubt that I'll buy the other issues on release date. I intend to pick up Ultimate End but the rest has little to no interest for me at the moment.

    616 Reed's life raft has become quite the sausage fest with Captain Marvel and Thor currently being the only female heroes on board. Good luck repopulating Earth like that.
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  9. #39
    Astonishing Member RobinFan4880's Avatar
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    I have read Avengers and New Avengers up to Infinity.

    I look at comic covers when I am in the comic store.

    The only thing I didn't get was Doom standing on a platform looking at a crack in space.

    Apparently I am unique in that I knew I would not understand everything and assume it will be explained upon later in the series.

  10. #40
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    Quote Originally Posted by TonySnark View Post
    I honestly don't think you needed to read the entirety of the run to understand this issue; a quick wiki on what Incursions are is all you really need. The finales of Avengers/New Avengers didn't directly lead into the events of #1, there was a bit of a jump so a lot of the information was new to even readers of both books. Like the Phoenix egg.

    I thought it was pretty straighforward, the 616 and Ultimate U collided, they fought for a bit, both were destroyed with a small group in the multiversal life raft. All that stuff is done now and the rest of the series should be easy to follow as it will establish how battleworld comes to be and how it works.
    That's right, we live in an age where information is a click away. I haven't been reading Avengers or New Avengers, X-Men, Guardians of the Galaxy ... but I still enjoyed this series. My lack of knowledge about particular comics doesn't reduce the quality of an issue. It reduces my enjoyment of it, perhaps, but again, I can just Google what I've missed out on. Besides, how confusing is it, really? Earths are crashing, superheroes are fighting.
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  11. #41
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    Quote Originally Posted by jackolover View Post
    Plot expediency at the cost of character. I couldn't immerse myself in the Avengers characters, because the story was the more powerful element. I suppose it just stood out to me because I was educated on Bendis Avengers, so yes, it's a problem of expectation on my part. But it appeared like the Avengers clocked on for the mission and just phoned it in. I'm just wondering was the "Avengers" book powerful enough to push aside character moments but leave it to Avengers Assembled to fill in the blanks?
    Again, I don't think that's quite right. It's true that Hickman is more focused on high concepts than interpersonal drama, so that there are fewer designated "character moments" in his stories. But the compensation is that his plots involve feuding factions with internal power struggles. His characters express themselves in how they align themselves and how they relate to their factions, so the plot expresses character as often as it overrides character. He operates at a high pitch of urgency that shows all the characters pushed to extremes, which makes casual scenes rare, but these big threats intensify the differences between Steve and Tony, T'Challa and Namor. The characters express themselves through their politics rather than their personal lives, but we still see their values, convictions, and limitations on full display.

    And this means that Hickman does better with characters who are as obsessed with the big picture as he is. He writes Reed Richards better than pretty much anyone (which must explain why he has written so many versions of Reed Richards). He writes a pretty good Iron Man, a good Doom, a good Beast, and a surprisingly good Smasher, a character both released and overwhelmed by the cosmic tapestry that she stumbles into. Casual characters like Spider-Man and Johnny Storm are not his strong-suit, in part because revealing the core of nobility beneath their goofy exteriors is old hat, but he writes them passably well as far as I'm concerned.

    Part of the issue is that few comics writers believe in writing tight plots. Bendis has his strengths, but economy has never been one of them. He writes many scenes that only do one thing: a fight happens, a motive is explained, two old friends chew the fat about nothing at all, a character makes a bold declaration of purpose. The side-effect of this style is that the comic talks about itself a lot, which helps with clarity, and there are scenes devoted to exploring the attitudes of characters in ways that are barely related to the main action. If you're used to that, Hickman looks cold. But if you're used to something like Hitchcock or Raymond Chandler, where the plot gradually uncovers the characters by their choices and attitutudes toward the main action, then someone like Bendis looks incredibly loose and sometimes sloppy. So it's a matter of style and perspective, for sure, and there's no reason you shouldn't like what you like, but I don't think that Hickman ignores his characters. He reveals them in terms of his plot, which makes his stories lack intimacy without lacking personality, I think.

  12. #42

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    Quote Originally Posted by Sam Robards, Comic Fan View Post
    This was one of the most inaccessible and borderline incomprehensible books I've read in a long time. It seems like Hickman (and editorial, by extension) are saying, "Oh, you haven't been reading both Avengers titles for the past 3 years? Then F*%& you. A new reader wants to jump into Marvel Comics through this well-publicized event? Good f*&^ing luck."

    I understand that in an event dealing with this many characters in this kind of situation, you won't know everything that's going on with everyone. But I read all the core X-Books, so why is it that I have no F*%&ING idea what Nation X is or why Cyclops has Sentinels? Not to mention whatever the Phoenix Egg is. I mean, you'd think they'd be able to base the X-Men's current status based on their actual books, but maybe I'm just being naive.

    I'm sorry if it seems like I'm ranting, which I kinda am, but this issue was such an extreme disappointment to me, especially knowing that I will need to go back and buy a number of Avengers books from the last few months to have any idea why things are the way they are with characters I like (Cyclops, specifically).

    I have hope for the rest of the series since it seems that building Battleworld up will be easier to follow than watching both universes end. But this issue was a massive, MASSIVE disappointment.
    I agree. I've read everything for the past three years Marvel and I couldn't figure out where a lot of these anomalies were coming from regarding the character inconsistencies and the point of entry. It's like Hickman/Marvel are just literally saying "Screw them, write anything, it will sell." "Draw anything, put tit$ on Rocket and a dong on Gamorra; it will sell." And, I'm always surprised when people say, "Oh it will get better." ......sigh....sure it will....just like Avengers vs X-Men, Age of Ultron, X-Men: Battle for the Atom, Black Vortex, Original Sin etc....LOL

  13. #43
    Fantastic Member QBall's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by xMatt View Post
    That's right, we live in an age where information is a click away. I haven't been reading Avengers or New Avengers, X-Men, Guardians of the Galaxy ... but I still enjoyed this series. My lack of knowledge about particular comics doesn't reduce the quality of an issue. It reduces my enjoyment of it, perhaps, but again, I can just Google what I've missed out on. Besides, how confusing is it, really? Earths are crashing, superheroes are fighting.
    Just an excuse for bad/lazy writing & the failings of the shared universe concept imho.

  14. #44
    Fantastic Member Dopliss's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by jackolover View Post
    You hit on a point I hadn't realised. Tony and Steve don't appear in this issue. They aren't on the cover and they don't get mentioned in the cast photos. Okay, SW isn't strictly an Avengers book, but it could be considered as such because all that happened in those books set this up. We could be bemused that this story didnt at least give the status of two of the big 3, and to exclude Odinson from this as well, there is the big 3 all missing. It may not be pertinent to what Secret Wars is trying to get to (because maybe SW was just a madeningly quick gallop towards oblivion), that these 3 Avengers aren't in the book, but it may have been worth mentioning it in a preview page. "Cap and Tony are busy fighting on the ground, and Odinson got killed fighting Beyonders, (but Hyperion escaped)".
    I saw a post on the original review thread where someone said they were disturbed by the idea that Hickman's Avengers ended essentially with Steve and Tony murdering each other.
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  15. #45
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    Quote Originally Posted by RobinFan4880 View Post
    I have read Avengers and New Avengers up to Infinity.

    I look at comic covers when I am in the comic store.

    The only thing I didn't get was Doom standing on a platform looking at a crack in space.

    Apparently I am unique in that I knew I would not understand everything and assume it will be explained upon later in the series.
    You my friend are a reader that I can support.

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