How Much Are We (The Fans) To Blame For Marvel's Current State?

[Frontier]

...But also true. Blue and Gold are not retreads, just fondly hearkening back to the good old days.

'Moving forward doesn't mean you can't fight any of your old enemies anymore. It's not a complete jettisoning of everything.

With Blue you have Jean leading the team, the O5 working for Magneto, Beast pursuing an interest in magic and the occult, and so on.

If Blue were a Rebirth title, you know that Charles Xavier would be back from the dead, leading the team again, saying "To me, my X-Men!" every issue. Hank wouldn't be into magic, Warren wouldn't have his cosmic wings and Bobby wouldn't be out.

And Gold has Kitty leading the team for the first time. And the X-mansion is now smack in the middle of Central Park. And the issue of deporting mutants is something that is pertinent to the here and now and not just generic mutant hysteria. This isn't just a retro title, with everyone in their early '90s duds.

Most importantly, the characters in Blue and Gold are people who have progressed and who have a history to draw on.

With Rebirth, it's more of just a messy patchwork of different eras. The new Superman timeline is a clumsy cut and paste job, for instance. I don't see how anyone can look at that and say "Oh, that's fine." I mean, it's like gluing together a vase that was shattered. It might look ok but you can never put water in it again without it leaking all over. Like New52 (and Crisis on Infinite Earths, for that matter), Rebirth has been less of a natural progression than it was a hard jerk of the wheel.

I really don't see how that's different from Rebirth, especially when most of those differences feel more cosmetic then really all that different from what came before.

If Blue were a Rebirth title, I don't see why any of that would have to be done away with since none of it really circumvents the core of the characters that Rebirth is about getting back too. I mean, it looks like young Hank's magic is going to lead to him getting his own beast form, which feels like something a Rebirth storyline would do. I don't see why Iceman wouldn't be out given DC's also publicly debuted the new Aqualad as gay. They're not against LGBT heroes.

I mean, in Gold Kitty's not really leading any differently from Scott or Ororo before her (which people have criticized), the X-Mansion is still the X-Mansion, and most of the team is wearing decidedly retro costumes. It doesn't feel much different from tons of X-titles in the past, and I say that as someone who enjoys the book.

You criticized Action Comics for being a pure 90's throwback, but the dynamic between Superman and Luthor, Superman with a son, and the upcoming Revenge arc are all different concepts then what we had in the 90's. Superman: Reborn would never have happened in the 90's either. It's as much of a throwback as Gold is.

And the current Superman timeline is probably the best that could be done to consolidate the characters' entire history, and we'll see how it works in the future, but I think it's probably the best attempt at creating an "Ultimate Superman" with elements from all eras. And Rebirth has, in general, been a much softer and more natural development for the DCU then the New 52 was, especially as far as respecting the past and not throwing out what was already working.

[Derek Metaltron]

I remember Bendis talking about this sort of thing back in 2004 when he'd get an email from one person saying they hated She Hulk and he should kill her off and then he'd immediately read another which said not to touch She Hulk. Point is, no fan wants the same thing, but Marvel and other companies have to try and sate all of them (and bear in mind that Bendis comment was pre MCU impact).

I mean I wish that Marvel had let Spider-Man grow up and mature and actually have a family as RYV does, all the way back when I started reading the odd story in the 90's, because I thought that was cool, but I also know there's people who think that Peter should be swinging single in his mid twenties forever. It's a tough thing. I'm grateful that Marvel has, umpteen mistakes aside, let something like Renew Your Vows - the Spider-Man I've wanted for a long time again - finally exist, even in an alternate universe.

[rui no onna]

Why are we comparing mainstream apples with Indy Oranges?

Vertigo books aren't expected to large sales numbers nor are most Image Titles these days. I personally love Brubaker's Criminal.

If Marvel were to bring back the Epic Imprint and published say, Arkon and Skull the Slayer on there I wouldn't say a word.

The expectations for a indy publishers is different.

DC and Marvel need new blood. They can't just keep selling to their existing, aging fanbase. Eventually, those people are gonna die off. I don't blame the fans but I think it's short-sighted for Marvel (and DC) to cater solely to those fans.

Vertigo may not sell well as floppies but they're some of DC's better sellers as trades. Same goes for Image books. Caveat with Image, the creators take a huge part of the financial risk if books don't sell.

The Big Two, every book has to be money makers as floppies or they're cancelled. It seems all the financial risk for new books falls on comic shops.

Marvel already has two very good alternate distribution methods to the direct market in place (Marvel Unlimited and Kindle/comiXology Unlimited) to reach a much wider reader base. Then they also have the Archie Comics digests deal. Why not give the direct market the core titles they want and try more minis, diverse books, etc, via other distribution methods?

[Prof. Warren]

I really don't see how that's different from Rebirth, especially when most of those differences feel more cosmetic then really all that different from what came before.

If Blue were a Rebirth title, I don't see why any of that would have to be done away with since none of it really circumvents the core of the characters that Rebirth is about getting back too. I mean, it looks like young Hank's magic is going to lead to him getting his own beast form, which feels like something a Rebirth storyline would do. I don't see why Iceman wouldn't be out given DC's also publicly debuted the new Aqualad as gay. They're not against LGBT heroes.

I mean, in Gold Kitty's not really leading any differently from Scott or Ororo before her (which people have criticized), the X-Mansion is still the X-Mansion, and most of the team is wearing decidedly retro costumes. It doesn't feel much different from tons of X-titles in the past, and I say that as someone who enjoys the book.

You criticized Action Comics for being a pure 90's throwback, but the dynamic between Superman and Luthor, Superman with a son, and the upcoming Revenge arc are all different concepts then what we had in the 90's. Superman: Reborn would never have happened in the 90's either. It's as much of a throwback as Gold is.

And the current Superman timeline is probably the best that could be done to consolidate the characters' entire history, and we'll see how it works in the future, but I think it's probably the best attempt at creating an "Ultimate Superman" with elements from all eras. And Rebirth has, in general, been a much softer and more natural development for the DCU then the New 52 was, especially as far as respecting the past and not throwing out what was already working.

I'm glad you're enjoying Rebirth. It just doesn't work for me.

But as this is a "Are fans to blame?" thread and not a Rebirth vs. ResurrecXtion thread, I suppose it's best to leave it at that!

[Frontier]

I'm glad you're enjoying Rebirth. It just doesn't work for me.

But as this is a "Are fans to blame?" thread and not a Rebirth vs. ResurrecXtion thread, I suppose it's best to leave it at that!

Fair enough .

[penthotal]

Hardly at all.

It's down to the MCU and the higher profile Marvel has now.

being featured on the View and EW has made them hungry to be in the public eye all the time.

The obsession with new readers and forgetting the people that actually made them who they are today and stuck with them for decades also played a part.

Throwing to the side Cap, ironman, Thor, Spiderman, FF, Xmen etc has been their biggest mistake, I get the need for diversity but never at the expense of established much loved and followed characters.

Thor jane, miles and Ms Marvel have just about worked, Miss America, Ironheart, Cho Hulk, Falcon cap, Moon girl etc have been a mess.

X-Men never had less than a zillion books in their name. Spider Man is their bes sellers meaning people actually like it. Thor is their second best selling title, meaning people actually like it. Iron Man and FF have been for years sub 30k titles and people remembered how important they were only when they disappeared / died.

They had diverse characters that had history and they threw them away to use well know names to push some random Bendis obsession. I get we need new characters but the way they were shoved down our throats didn't make them appeal to many.

Unless someone from Marvel pointed a gun at your had and forced you buy their comics, nobody is shoving nothing down your throats. You are free to buy what you want.

[stingray]

Hardly at all.

It's down to the MCU and the higher profile Marvel has now.

being featured on the View and EW has made them hungry to be in the public eye all the time.

The obsession with new readers and forgetting the people that actually made them who they are today and stuck with them for decades also played a part.

Relaunches and terrible terrible events play a major part too.

DC did it best when they messed up with Nu52 and then listened to the actually people who buy their books and Rebirth has been fantastic.

Throwing to the side Cap, ironman, Thor, Spiderman, FF, Xmen etc has been their biggest mistake, I get the need for diversity but never at the expense of established much loved and followed characters.

Thor jane, miles and Ms Marvel have just about worked, Miss America, Ironheart, Cho Hulk, Falcon cap, Moon girl etc have been a mess.

They had diverse characters that had history and they threw them away to use well know names to push some random Bendis obsession. I get we need new characters but the way they were shoved down our throats didn't make them appeal to many.

they alienated the fans and laughed at them, called them racist or sexist and expected new fans to cover the cost.

arrogance, plain and simple.

I won't even mention the disgraceful treatment of the FF and Xmen which is only now being fixed due to low sales and no one caring about Inhumans.

Exactly. Agreed on almost all points, although I like the Inhumans Royal Family, Marvel keeps wanting to push the Nu-Humans on us. I thought that would change with the launch of Royals, but the book only has half the Royal Family in it. Same with X-Men Blue. Love the original team, but Beast is a magician now?! Isn't it enough he's a super intelligent and athletic mutant? Why doesn't he just pull a Dr. Strange every time they fight someone? Ridiculous. I also think the art on most of Marvel's books is sub-standard. The still life abstract water colors on the main Avengers book made me drop it. And for those criticizing Rebirth, I think it's fantastic, and made me pick up my first DC books since Flashpoint happened. Look at the art on Batman, for instance: Great detail and story telling. Easy to tell what's going on without having to stare at a panel for 5 minutes trying to figure out what is going on. I love the homage covers of Legacy, with the corner boxes and everything. I'll pick up a few of these because of those alone. I just hope the story and art are worth it, but I'll give some books a try that I wouldn't have picked up before this.

[Rogue Star]

I think this is a question that needs to be asked. We've seen a lot of complaining and debates within these threads. I freely admit I've done more than my share of both. There's all this talk about how much people hate Hydra Cap, how much they want a worthy Thor back, how much they hate some of the replacement characters, how much they had the hero-versus-hero clashes, how much they hate relaunches, etc. I don't want this to be another thread about the state of Marvel's sales figures. That's an issue nobody outside the industry is qualified to discuss. But the more I see these issues pop up, the more I wonder whether this is a classic, "It's not you, it's me" type scenario.

Let's not lie to ourselves. We fans made a LOT of demands on Marvel. We expect them to provide us with fun, interesting stories about the characters we love. But we only want that so long as the characters we love don't change too much and remain exactly as we want them to for now and until the end of time. If they do something novel and fresh, we'll whine about how we want the classics. If they give us the classics, we'll whine about how boring and bland it is. There's literally no way Marvel can win there. They want to excite their customers, but we keep rolling our eyes because they aren't giving us exactly what we want all the time, every time, and without any significant cost. That's like getting mad at the sky for being blue.

So let's ask the hard question here. Are we to blame? Are we the reason Marvel's current comic line is in the state it's in?

I have supported books and they keep cancelling them. How am I to blame? They're more interested in publicity stunts, pandering for social justice points and copping sales on #1's than they are in upholding the quality and integrity of their brand.

[kilderkin]

There's lots of talk of how some fans feel owed

There's lots of comments made of older fans feeling entitled

And people pointing out this isn't true (opinions vary here of course)

Now I can live with that

But it works both ways - we as paying customers and consumers don't owe anything at all imo

We like what we do and that can change - though I feel it tends not to

Call that fickle if you like but I'd more call it the result of the fact that people like something and when it's altered it stops being what they liked so they might stay or drop it

Change can be good but it isn't always - even something as small as the loss of a minor supporting character can mean I stop reading a book because I just don't like it enough any more to pay the dollar price

That's the nature of business

Now is marvel to blame for trying to succeed of course not

Am I as a consumer or are we as fans - nope not one bit all we can do is say what we like buy what we want and respect the fact people are trying to earn a living and not hurl abuse at them

But as has been pointed out by many including creators and publishers

If we don't have ownership as a fan we don't have blame either imo

[Rogue Star]

DC is movin forward. Superman has a son, and there is two diverse Green lanterns. You cant balme fans when Marvel themselves thinks anger readers is a sell point. And you cant force me to like a character just because they are POC. I will never care about ri rih williams of whatever her name is, she never earned her place. If a white 15 years old girl take over the Iron man tittle with just months of existence she would have next to zero fans, when the only point of a character appeal is their colour skin , something is wrong. And is not just Marvel, i said the Same about Snyder and his pet Duke in DC

You ain't never lied!

It's such a put off when Marvel says, "You want a ______ character? There you go!"

They're like Oprah now. "YOU get a ___. You get a ___. Everyone gets a ____."

Meanwhile the character has no redeeming qualities beyond being (fill in the blank). Are people really so shallow that they are pacified by this sort of pandering?

I'm 1/2 black, 1/4 Irish and 1/4 Native American - where's the character that I identify with and validates my existence? Hell, my favorite Marvel character is a southern white girl and my favorite DC character is Asian. I like them because they're great characters; I'm not looking for validation.

So does Marvel think "diversifying" their line of books is going to earn my dollars when they still can't tell a good story with great characters? If so, they're dead wrong.

[FUBAR007]

We fans made a LOT of demands on Marvel. We expect them to provide us with fun, interesting stories about the characters we love. But we only want that so long as the characters we love don't change too much and remain exactly as we want them to for now and until the end of time. [...] So let's ask the hard question here. Are we to blame? Are we the reason Marvel's current comic line is in the state it's in?

No.

And, as for the "fans want nothing to ever change" canard, that's an oversimplified cliche. What fans are really railing against is inconsistency. Changes that occur need to be consistent with what's come before. They need to feel like an organic evolution and extension of the past. For example, when previously heroic, upstanding protagonists walk out on their families or cheat on their wives, that's inconsistent and offensive. On a more meta-level, when a long-standing hero's decades-long marriage is retconned away via a blatant, out of character deus ex machina in order to satisfy the editor-in-chief's personal preferences, that's inconsistent and offensive.

Change is fine as long as it makes sense. Ensuring that sort of consistency is the job of the editors. That's where the creative buck stops, and that's ultimately who's to blame for inconsistent character portrayals, flagrant disregard for continuity, and poor stories.

As for the state of Marvel more broadly, many of its problems are endemic to the comics industry as a whole. There's never been much of a culture or ethic of professionalism. The business side has historically been petty and dirty as all get out. Most importantly, though, publishers remain wedded to an obsolete business model.

Read accounts by people who've worked in the industry for a long time. As a fan, it does ruin a lot of the magic for you, but it educates you as to the reality that writers, artists, and editors have to deal with. I recommend starting with Jim Shooter's blog at www.jimshooter.com. Other good sources are Tom DeFalco's trilogy of Comics Creators books on Spider-Man, X-Men, and the Fantastic Four as well as Sean Howe's Marvel Comics: The Untold Story.

[Frontier]

No.

And, as for the "fans want nothing to ever change" canard, that's an oversimplified cliche. What fans are really railing against is inconsistency. Changes that occur need to be consistent with what's come before. They need to feel like an organic evolution and extension of the past. For example, when previously heroic, upstanding protagonists walk out on their families or cheat on their wives, that's inconsistent and offensive. On a more meta-level, when a long-standing hero's decades-long marriage is retconned away via a blatant, out of character deus ex machina in order to satisfy the editor-in-chief's personal preferences, that's inconsistent and offensive.

Change is fine as long as it makes sense. Ensuring that sort of consistency is the job of the editors. That's where the creative buck stops, and that's ultimately who's to blame for inconsistent character portrayals, flagrant disregard for continuity, and poor stories.

As for the state of Marvel more broadly, many of its problems are endemic to the comics industry as a whole. There's never been much of a culture or ethic of professionalism. The business side has historically been petty and dirty as all get out. Most importantly, though, publishers remain wedded to an obsolete business model.

Read accounts by people who've worked in the industry for a long time. As a fan, it does ruin a lot of the magic for you, but it educates you as to the reality that writers, artists, and editors have to deal with. I recommend starting with Jim Shooter's blog at www.jimshooter.com. Other good sources are Tom DeFalco's trilogy of Comics Creators books on Spider-Man, X-Men, and the Fantastic Four as well as Sean Howe's Marvel Comics: The Untold Story.

I agree with this.

[Knives]

I do not know if can add something or not to the topic but I recognize that fans today seem to have less patience and give up a comic even before the first arc of the story ends. Others choose which comic to buy only by the characters on the team and this certainly limits the writers' work very much, but this is also a consumer right.

I have nothing against innovations but let's face it characters like Miss Marvel and Miles work for a simple reason they are not simple copies.And their religion, skin color, ethnicity or sexual preference are only part of the whole and not the most important as they try to do with some characters.

Also do not believe that to promote a character you need to harm others this will inevitably create problems. One thing, for example, is to make a character like Daredevil or Hall Jordan look bad for a while but you always need to take certain precautions so you do not make the character hated or go too far because you run the risk of harming the characters for years and consequently the fans.

[rui no onna]

How would Star Wars fans, or Xfiles, or game of thrones, react if half their favorite characters were sidelined?

I feel like we're reading/watching different things. The books I read regularly feature characters dying or getting maimed quite gruesomely. That said, the events actually do matter and character deaths usually stick unless they become mindless wights or are turned into shadows of their former selves (e.g. Lady Stoneheart/Catelyn Stark).

I do not know if can add something or not to the topic but I recognize that fans today seem to have less patience and give up a comic even before the first arc of the story ends. Others choose which comic to buy only by the characters on the team and this certainly limits the writers' work very much, but this is also a consumer right.

That's likely to do with comic books being so expensive nowadays. Also, when we see the estimates for Diamond charts, we only see sales to retailers inclusive of variants geared towards collectors (particularly true for #1s and #2s). We don't really get an inkling of how many floppy readers there are until #3 onwards.

[Vegeta]

With Rebirth, it's more of just a messy patchwork of different eras. The new Superman timeline is a clumsy cut and paste job, for instance. I don't see how anyone can look at that and say "Oh, that's fine." I mean, it's like gluing together a vase that was shattered. It might look ok but you can never put water in it again without it leaking all over. Like New52 (and Crisis on Infinite Earths, for that matter), Rebirth has been less of a natural progression than it was a hard jerk of the wheel.

Your broken vase/ cut and paste metaphor basically describes the post "Secret Wars" Marvel landscape. Lots of alternate reality characters shoe horned into what we once called the 616, and an 8 month "time skip" so they don't have to actually show any natural progression. (Ie: Amazing Spider-Man, "my new business Parker Industries has burnt down" suddenly jumps forward to "Parker Industries is a hugely successful international conglomerate!")