The Captain lives again

Happy now, PeeDee?

You can come out of mourning.

Not unexpected. This is why I've pretty much given up on most American comics. They're too predictable.

I'm shocked.

no, wait...

not so much.

Oh, yeah...and then some super-patriotic super-villain with original name of...oh, I dunno...the Super Patriot or USAgent will show up to bedevil the new Cap.

And then after a year's worth of bedeviling, the mask will come off and the super-villain will be revealed as--

>gasp!< Oh No!

It can't be!!!!!

Not--

Hal Jordan!!!!

Hal Jordan's a little busy kicking Sinestero's ass across the galaxy. You want to read the best Super-Hero comic out there, go for Geoff John's work on Green Lantern right now. Best thing in years and years.

Super-Hero comics have been predictable since they first began, ages and ages ago. Even the greats, like Will Eisner's Spirit. That's hardly the point of 'em.

interesting article here on how the comics aren't what they used to be...

http://www.icv2.com/articles/talkback/11521.html

It's an interesting article and one that I, mostly, agree with. I don't read a lot of comics anymore. I keep track, I keep tabs on afew favorites, but they aren't fun to read. Civil War was miserable (and not just because they botched it on every level), it was miserable. Iron Man and Captain America were my favorites growing up.

Iron Man won, except he was the bad guy to me, so comics like The Initiative just seem like following the Nazis, if you see what I mean.

Ultimate Spider-Man is great fun. X-Men: First Class is a magnificant comic. So is Astonishing X-Men.

On the DC side of things, I think the editor's went to lunch last year and never came back. It's the biggest mess you can imagine. And that's not even talking about this Countdown crap. Geoff Johns is doing stunning, stunning (stunning!) work with Green Lantern, but the rest? Bleh. I can't remember the last time I cared to pick up Batman, or Superman. Or worse, Batman/Superman. BLEH.

Back at Marvel, they're having to face the facts that Tony Stark, as he stands now, is a bad guy and fans want blood. That's why its popular for him to get his ass kicked. We want him dead.

I am slowly falling out of love with Quesada's New Marvel program. It's grim and boring. But then, so's DC, mostly.

*shuffles back to his Sandman*

Oh at first I thought you were talking about Captain Planet.

No, he's dead, dead, dead. He better be. I am hanging myself if ever we get a Captain Planet revival.

Thank God! I was angered and shocked when they killed him off. He was my all time ALL TIME favorite superhero. Greatest of all. I was truly in mourning, unlike Pete's psuedo-mourning. I haven't been able to buy a comic book since he died.

Because I truly felt they had killed him off. He wasn't cool by today's kids standards. He wasn't a true vigilante. He didn't just kill people willy-nilly. He had old-fashioned values and morals and stuff no one gives a rat's patootey about any more. So I thought he was gone for good.

So this is great news. There will be much rejoicing and massive drinking of adult beverages in the Ferret household when I get home tonight.

Captain America LIVES!

Oh wait. He doesn't live! It's a false Captain America!

Steve Rogers, who IS Captain America, is still dead.

This is a fake Captain America. A sham.

He uses a gun?

Might as well left him dead.

The long running characters are basically soap operas.

More fighting and all, but they follow a similar track.

You say that like its a bad thing. I think that's why Marvel started kicking butt in the late 60s and 70s because they were soap operas. They treated the characters like real people with real problems instead of just cardboard characters that fought the criminal of the week.

Shadow_Ferret said:

You say that like its a bad thing. I think that's why Marvel started kicking butt in the late 60s and 70s because they were soap operas. They treated the characters like real people with real problems instead of just cardboard characters that fought the criminal of the week.

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Or, as they seem to be now, a bunch of miserable people with miserable problems with are all miserable. It's not a soap opera, it's a really depressing HBO show sometimes.

I'll have you know, Ed, that I was as miserable when Captain America died as when I was younger and Superman died. Captain America dying was a big deal. It turned me off to a huge chunk of Marvel comics. It sort of like watching someone rip the stuffing out of your teddy bear.

I'm less than blown away by this comeback, but I have faith in Ed Brubaker. Captain America's new costume is darker, he uses a gun...I'm expecting this to be a "darker, harder, meaner" sort of Captain America. I don't want him to be Frank Castle, I want him to be Steve Rogers.

I want Steve Rogers back, god damn it.

I'm one of those people who thought making Hal Jordan go insane and become Parallax was one of the stupidest ideas in a field that has a nearly infinite number of stupid ideas.

I remember talking to then-GL editor Kevin Dooley when that whole deal was in the planning process (Darryl Banks and I were pitching another way to reboot the Green Lantern franchise that didn't involve Hal Jordan becoming a mass murderer).

When I pointed out to Dooley that if they followed the silly Parallax plan, then they could never use Hal again, he said smugly, "It doesn't matter. Hal is dead as character. Once he dies as Parallax, he'll be dead forever. This is permanent. The only GL in the DC universe will be Kyle Rayner."

Yeah.

Permanent.

That's right.

Uh-huh.

In another conversation with Dooley during that time, he claimed that a new, younger GL had to be introduced because Hal Jordan was peceived as being "old" and held no appeal to the circle-jerk dancin', fast-livin', hard-meth sniffin' Image fan base.

When I pointed that it was the DC genuises who decided to put gray streaks in Hal's hair in the first place and then retroactively decide he was the first Silver Age hero, Dooley really didn't have much to say, as I recall.

I do remember adding that DC editors arbitrarily decided to make Hal old, then just as arbitrarily decided to blame him for it.

(And some folks wonder why I qualify my comments about the comics field by referring to it as "the so-called industry".)

You coulda knocked me over with a feather.

Hal Jordan is terrific. John WhatsHisName and Guy Gardner are interesting, Kyle Rayner was fun, but Hal Jordan is Green Lantern and Barry Allen is the Flash, damn it. I don't care who else comes along.

(and Kilowog. God bless Kilowog)

Him becoming Parallax was a really stupid idea, for sure. It did nothing for me. I didn't sit there thinking, in shock "This will change the character and world forever! No!" I was sitting there thinking "Why are they messing with a perfectly good hero? Maaan...."

Green Lanter right now is the best super-hero comic on the market. Sinestro Corps is taking characters which never worked (like that weird Mecha-Superman guy, I forgot his proper name) and making them interesting and viable.

What I find interesting is that the idea Darryl and I pitched in furtherance of the whole Kyle thing (who I do like as a character, honestly) was that Hal gained control over Ferris Aircraft and hired Carol to run for him. He focused on being a pilot again, much like the latest incarnation of Hal.

That was going to be basic set-up, including a rival aerospace company actually controlled by some exiles from Qward who worked with a new/old version of Solomon Grundy...now with brains and pants that fit.

Jeez, that was a long time ago. I do know I took the basic premise and retooled it into my own Paladin Alpha.

Shadow_Ferret said:

You say that like its a bad thing. I think that's why Marvel started kicking butt in the late 60s and 70s because they were soap operas. They treated the characters like real people with real problems instead of just cardboard characters that fought the criminal of the week.

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Actually, if you want something to have legs, I think it's a very good thing. You don't watch soaps for the plots, because they usualy only have one. Character A has a secret they need to keeps from Character B, and then Character C finds out and it just a matter of time until the proverbial hits the rotary cooling device.

However, to have a viewership invested in such nonsense you MUST have strong characters (though I'll admit, many soaps just over-do it and have caricatures instead).

What Marvel did that was so awesome was, and I pick two titles at random, because there are plenty of examples, give the reader a first-hand "in" to the comic. Peter Parker was a great guy but he could never tell the people that mattered just how special he was. We don't have spidersense, or wall-crawling abilities, but we all, as kids, felt that way towards someone.

And the Fantastic Four. They were your family. And you were The Human Torch. You had your sibling who you busted on (Thing) and Mom and Dad (Reed and Sue) who were the more sensible ones, but you were the live wire who always got introuble for doing what you were born to do!

There was action and drama from the bad-guys, but there was also a drama you could relate to because you could relate to the characters. But they also had humor. (And on a side note, that's what I hated about the Spidey movies. When I was a kid, Spidey would trashtalk the badguys as he put them down. And where was that in the movies?)

wordmonkey said:

When I was a kid, Spidey would trashtalk the badguys as he put them down. And where was that in the movies?)

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You're absolutely right. One of the qualities about Spider-Man that never seems to get enough attention was just how funny the series could be. It was the humor juxtaposed with the super-heroics that initially drew me to the character in the mid-60s.

As for the soap-opera approach to story-telling...again, you're absolutely right.

I applied that same principle to the Outlanders novel series and I think it's one of the reasons it lasted as long as it did when so many of the other series put out by the publisher died within a year.

When Spider-Man DID quip in the movies, during fight scenes, it was like a cheesy quip made by a power ranger. Sad.

Since Back in Black, I've lost interest in Spider-Man too. Joe Straczynski is a master writer and he can do good with anything, but I do begin to wonder how much Joe Quesada is putting his fingers into Spider-Man recently.

To say that I'm interested in "Brand New Day" is to tell an outright lie.

PeeDee said:

Since Back in Black, I've lost interest in Spider-Man too. Joe Straczynski is a master writer and he can do good with anything, but I do begin to wonder how much Joe Quesada is putting his fingers into Spider-Man recently.

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Actually I have an insight here. Well, not me per se, but you'll see.

At HeroesCon last year, I sat in on a talk by Paul Jenkins. He'd worked on the Spidey unmasking in Civil War and he was working on the Wolverine Origin mini.

He was talking about how they had basically let him work Wolverine Origin as he wanted because no one was much bothered with it at Marvel (I think it was along the lines of "It's Wolverine, kids'll buy it anyways, do whatever.") So he started and it took off. Suddenly it was like a hot book.

Got to the script draft for the final issue and he gets a call asking what about including this scene? And that scene? And this showdown? And this line of dialog? He says, what scenes and showdowns and dialog?

Seems that as it took off, the suits had gotten together, discussed the raging hot title and then entered into a brainstorming session. No one had seen fit to include the writer or actually let him know what they had all come up with.

I never bought the mini, but supposedly the pacing is all fine and dandy and moving at a nice clip, until the last issue, where they have nine panels a page, every page, just to get all this stuff the suits insisted on, being in.

So I suspect it's often less about the writer doing sucky things and sometimes more about the paycheck-writers. At least with the bigger companies. Smaller indies might just have crap writers, but then they don't tend to survive long.

PeeDee said:

I'm less than blown away by this comeback, but I have faith in Ed Brubaker. Captain America's new costume is darker, he uses a gun...I'm expecting this to be a "darker, harder, meaner" sort of Captain America. I don't want him to be Frank Castle, I want him to be Steve Rogers.

I want Steve Rogers back, god damn it.

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Me, too. And sorry if I portrayed your grief as less than sincere.

I don't like a darker, meaner, harder Cap with a gun. That's not what Cap was about and this is exactly what I was talking about when I said of the current trend in comics for vigilantes to become "like the criminal." Captain America had stayed above the fray for the most part, still moral, still virtuous, still the super Boy Scout.

I never liked the whole "Dark Knight" turn Frank Miller gave Batman. I was never a fan of The Punisher. And the even darker "heroes?" No thank you.

Captain America was a bright shining light of justice and goodness amidst the black hearted heroism that has gripped comic books.

Now he's joined them, it seems.

Captain America lives? Not to me he doesn't. Not to me.

Fortunately, we can have faith that this, too, shall pass. Everyone's "Newer, Darker Superman," didn't last very long. He turned into "gayer, dumber blue-energy superman," and even that fizzled out and he turned back into Superman.

These days, Superman is about as abstract as a Dali painting. But I have hope that Steve Rogers will resurface and resume being Captain America. I have an extremely elaborate story worked out in my head for how he survived and how he can return. I could tell it in six issues, if someone would care to sign a gob of money away to me.