Your DC-Only controversial opinions...

[Sirzechs]

Garth Ennis should write Justice League.
Mark Millar should write the Titans.
Tom King's Omega Men has the potential to be one DC's greatest runs of all time. Up there with Ostrander's Spectre & Robinson's Starman. Yes, I am serious.
Ambush Bug should be a member of the Justice League.
Bryan Hitch should write the regular Justice League title.

Say what now?

[t hedge coke]

Are your characters worth a damn? That's the issue. If you're going to develop a team from scratch, seven is too many. You won't be able to come up with that many original ones. If you can create four good characters, you've done a great job. And even using seven "all stars" who other people have created is difficult. The more characters, the less characterization.

When you see seven, though, it's usually established characters, two slots falling to relative rookies. So, in effect, a band of five, and two pinch hitters or stand-there-in-awe characters.

But, a good artist, a good writer can bring a ton of characterization into one panel, one moment. Not all characterization has to be drawn out in dialogue, some of it's in the face, in the clothes, in the physical dynamics between characters. Some of it is most strongly communicated by the basic decisions of a character, body language, fundamental actions, immediate responses. George Perez can do a Perez crowdshot or a comic with seventy characters not because he can draw real small and still the characters are identifiable, but because he'll give everyone something or someone to look at, something in-character to do and have them do it functionally in-world. Characters hold their hats down when they run, in a Perez world, they look across a room at old lovers or old enemies and smile or lock their jaw. Chris Burnham can do the same level of character work and add a few layers of symbolic imagery or referential shapes in the scene on top of it, for better or worse.

Smaller groups of characters in a scene allow for more intimacy in the scene, and more easily accommodate melodrama. But, melodrama is not characterization. Intimacy is not characterization or the only way to get it.

And, not every team member needs to be in every scene, every conversation. Just because a movie is about a baseball team, a comic about a football team, doesn't mean every scene is going to feature all the players, all the time. Same with superheroes. Scenes may not even focus on team members, but villains, friends of members, wives and husbands, the mailman.

But, you can have a comic with two characters in it, and have horrible or virtually no character work to it. I don't think you can say that anyone in Batman Inc or Power Company got cheated of characterization (except for PC being canceled way too early). Kurt Busiek, Chris Burnham, Grant Morrison, and Tom Grummet are too good and too deft for that. (And, Peter Tomasi's too good of an editor.) They might even have better characterization because there are large teams and a lot going on. Less time for longwinded, indulgent speeches; intense, carefully considered and immediate characterization becoming the target. We had more characterization for Kyle Rayner in the seven to thirteen-member JLA than we did, often, in his solo title. He was bounced off more characters, put in a wider variety of situations, and that helped him blossom in ways shoving his girlfriend in the fridge didn't.

[t hedge coke]

Say what now?

Ambush Bug should be a member of Garth Ennis' Justice League. That's written by Bryan Hitch. So, Garth on pencils.

I would pay real money (for an issue or two).

[Starchild]

Say what now?

It could be hilarious.

[t hedge coke]

You mean when he was doing the Batutsie?

Serious &*#^@ing dancing.

There's only three dances Batman will commit to. The batusi. The tango of death. And stomping on the neck of evil. And he dances them all with due seriousness.

[t hedge coke]

My issue with Finch's WW is how her kindness keeps being shown as weakness and a sign of stupidity of her part. I don't know if it's intentional or not, but I find it annoying.

And there's the issue of Donna's new origin.

I haven't seen her kindness treated as such, yet, by anyone whose judgment I'd trust. It's not Superman saying that, y'know?

Donna's origin is... new. But it's giving her room to grow that she hasn't had, in the old version, for a long, long time. I'm glad to see den mother Donna retired for awhile, and see a new Donna find her way in the world and make recompense for being such a tool.

[SiegePerilous02]

I'm pretty sure whn people talk about how hot pre-37 Grayson was they're not talking about the pixie boots or the disco suit.

Doesn't matter how good looking he is or how great his personality is, because nobody should be getting that many fangirls in those costumes. And it isn't just the superhero costumes

Nightwinglol.jpg

Get in line ladies.

Its the butt just google Nightwing butt.

It's mainstream comic book art. His butt is indistinguishable from anybody else's.

[FanboyStranger]

After 15 years of writing comics, no writer should be allowed to write more than one title per month.

From when they started or when you noticed them? 'Cause most regular writers these days have put in fifteen years before they get a Big Two book. (I loved it when people thought Rick Remender was new after putting out 20 years of comics. Or Bendis after 15. Or Brubaker after 15. Or Lemire after 13.)

[FanboyStranger]

As far as I can tell, Claremont was writing for the mythical reader who has never read an issue of X-Men before, but now wants to know the entire history of every character in the first issue they read. That was what made his X-Men unreadable for me.

I love the dense books like Batman: Year One and Moore's Swamp Thing if they quality is that high, but for the most part I like books to move at a faster pace.

In Claremont's defense, the idea at the time was that any comic should be the reader's first, something that was hammered home by Jim Shooter. Sadly, once that was no longer the case, he lost his mojo.

[FanboyStranger]

Tom King's Omega Men has the potential to be one DC's greatest runs of all time. Up there with Ostrander's Spectre & Robinson's Starman. Yes, I am serious.

I think "of all time" is a bit much, but certainly in the last decade. And I'd quibble it's probably more Barnaby Bagenda as his art has been an absolute revelation. It's like seeing John Burns on Nikolai Dante after expecting Simon Fraser-- you didn't know comics could be quite like this.

[Crazy Diamond]

Doesn't matter how good looking he is or how great his personality is, because nobody should be getting that many fangirls in those costumes. And it isn't just the superhero costumes

Nightwinglol.jpg

Get in line ladies.



It's mainstream comic book art. His butt is indistinguishable from anybody else's.

I saw an essay giving an explanation for why Dick Grayson has that kind of popularity. I mean, it's no more ridiculous than all the drawings of superheroines in impossible posses meant to show off their breasts or their tiny waists on the premise that that's attractive to male readers.

http://comicsalliance.com/why-is-nightwing-hot/

That being said, he looks like a cross between Scott Hall and a SNK character in that picture.

[The_Greatest_Username]

- I like Element Woman better than Metamorpho.

I thought I was the only one!
Seriously, Emily is great.

[Lee Stone]

From when they started or when you noticed them? 'Cause most regular writers these days have put in fifteen years before they get a Big Two book. (I loved it when people thought Rick Remender was new after putting out 20 years of comics. Or Bendis after 15. Or Brubaker after 15. Or Lemire after 13.)

Not to mention, Stan Lee would have only been able to write Fantastic Four, and nothing else, in the 60s, since his first comic was twenty years before Fantastic Four #1.

[Lee Stone]

Are your characters worth a damn? That's the issue. If you're going to develop a team from scratch, seven is too many. You won't be able to come up with that many original ones. If you can create four good characters, you've done a great job. And even using seven "all stars" who other people have created is difficult. The more characters, the less characterization.

Or they can explore how Levitz mastered juggling a large cast.
His early story and subplot structures are still studied today by aspiring writers.
Google Levitz Paradigm.

[Stanlos]

Wonder Woman as a miracle child born from clay is far cooler than her being just another brat of Zeus

This times ten thousand bazillion