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Reply Subj: Re: The Nine Worst Avengers Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2010 at 05:06:43 pm EDT (Viewed 379 times) | |||||||
Quote: Quote: Originally he had "the power of a million exploding suns", then they adjusted it to "power of a thousand exploding suns"; either way it was stupid.Quote: Considering that one exploding star is enough to wipe out the solar system, does it really matter what number they put before it? I like how we've gone from "more powerful than a locomotive" to this level now.Yeah, it's all hyperbole; I don't think there was any actual power deviation when they started saying a thousand versus a million. Quote: Quote: The other problem the character suffered from what inconsistency; nobody can really say what his powers are, after all this time. Sometimes he seems to be just like Superman, in one appearance had had power over molecules (exactly like the Molecule Man), he supposedly has psionic powers (which is how everyone "forgot" about him)...it's impossible to get a bead on the guy.Quote: Quote: They should have given him a cellophane Sentry symbol on his costume that he could throw at people. Well, hopefully he stays dead for a good long while, and never shows up in any movies.Unfortunately the ending of Siege where he died left the perfect out to bring the character back; Thor killed him and then sent his body into the sun. Considering he has the "power of X exploding suns" a writer could certainly revive him later with that connection. I hope they don't though. Quote: Quote: Quote: Until I got the 30 years of Avengers DVD (collecting the main title from the 60's to the first few issues of New Avengers) I hadn't read any other appearances from him other than Under Siege. I didn't like him in Under Siege, and I didn't like him after I read more of his stories on my computer.Quote: How much was the DVD? I ask because...At the time it came out it was worth between $30-$50. However, Marvel stopped putting the collections out because they wanted to make more money off of their digital comics service instead. Collections were done for Spider-Man, Ghost Rider, Hulk, Captain America, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Iron Man, and the Avengers (may have been one or two more, I'm not sure off the top of my head). Unfortunately the company licensed to produce the collections hadn't got the Thor one out yet! Now these DVD collections can go from anywhere between $30-$200 on E-Bay. I only managed to get 4 of the collections when they were reasonably priced; Spider-Man (which is on about 10 CDs instead of 1 or 2 DVDs), Avengers, Iron Man, and X-Men. Quote: Quote: Quote: You get free comics on you I-Pad? Nice.Quote: I believe the Marvel app works on I-pod touches and I-phones as well. It's a remarkably good comic reader on the I-pad screen, very quick and responsive, and the Marvel store has a new assortment of free issues every week or so. When the I-pad launched, it was consistently on the "must get" lists of apps...Quote: Which is why I'm really disappointed that Marvel seems unwilling to commit to it. It's obviously a toe in the water at best, because the comics that you can get for it are all old ones... recent enough that they would already have digital files for them all, but usually at least a few years old. It's like one random back-issue bin, only they charge $1.99 per issue, which is *way* too much. There are no deals, no collected versions... They'll put out the six issues of a storyline, and you have to buy them individually for $2 each. The price might work if I could buy a specific storyline I want, but the comics available seem to measure around maybe a hundred total. So there are something like 14 Avengers issues (a Geoff Johns story arc and the opening "New Avengers" story arc) for instance. As a result, I haven't bought a single comic.Quote: It's extraordinarily stupid, because every now and again I'll hear about a comic and go look for it in their store, and of course it's not there. You can't read any current comics, and you can't get hooked on a title because they add them randomly... so after you finish one story arc, lord knows if they'll ever get around to offering the next story arc in line for sale there. And $2 for a digital copy only is *way* too high a price. There is zero collectors value and zero printing costs (while programming and conversion costs are probably much lower). That's my biggest beef with the digital delivery system. The costs to the producers is much lower (no material costs, shipping, etc), yet the price is the same as if you bought the DVD, CD, or book in a store. And you don't actually own anything with the digital comics, do you? I thought you just bought the rights to see the books on-line (though I could be wrong about that). I don't even know if we can get the digital comics in Canada, especially on the iPad (since it just came out here; I do not understand why Apple delays things in Canada compared to the US). Since I have dial-up internet, I haven't looked into it. Quote: I have to assume the reason they didn't go with a more reasonable $1 per issue is that then it would be a much better value for people who just want to read the story to buy the app copy rather than a published graphic novel of it, and they don't want to undercut that side of the business. I have trouble understanding why they aren't offering new comics at all on the thing... hell, even comics a month or two behind the newstands, but added as ongoing series so that people could get hooked and keep buying. It's such a blown opportunity to expand the audience for comics. I hate that there's a beautiful app which most everyone with an I-pad downloaded, and now they won't offer me anything for it that I would want to buy.That would make sense to me; delay the release a month or two, but put it out sequentially. You're probably right though, they don't want to undercut the tpb business, but why not try and build both up to be strong? I think a lot of readers still prefer to have a copy on paper than an electronic one. Quote: Quote: Quote: I read Bendis' Avengers for about 30 issues, then dropped it. I like him on books like Daredevil, but he can't handle large super-powered casts very well. I am admittedly getting Avengers Prime though, which is supposed to be the reconciliation of Cap, Iron Man, and Thor. The smaller group should work well for him I hope.Quote: I very much agree with Ian's point that Bendis writes crime stories well, but those have very different needs and story beats than the more grand heroic fiction. As such, IMO he's very good a creating horrible situations, and very bad at giving the heroes a triumph in the end.Exactly. Quote: Quote: If you'd named the New Avengers the Marvel Knights I would have enjoyed the book more. The name was the only similarity.Quote: I would have preferred that myself. Now I wonder, had they done that, would we be getting a "Marvel Knights" movie in a few years instead?I would be quite happy to see a movie with Spider-Man, Daredevil, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist actually.  Quote: Quote: Quote: And now there are 3 Avengers teams running around (New, Secret, and adjectiveless), so it gets muddied even more. That being said, I picked up the first issue of Secret Avengrs and really enjoyed it (the line-up is really fun; Steve Rogers, War Machine, Black Widow, Valkyrie, Moon Knight, Ant-Man (the new one, Eric), Beast, and Nova).Quote: I thought the new Ant-Man was a criminal who used his powers to watch Ms. Marvel shower or something?He was, then I believe he became a part of the Thunderbolts. Guess he reformed enough there to make the cut on the Secret Avengers. Having an Ant-Man on the team does make a lot of sense or an espionage team, and they also need that rookie perspective on the team, so he fits the bill. I don't know that Hank would be well suited to the cloak and dagger stuff anyway (though Scott Lang would have been good if he hadn't died for shock value in Disassembled). Quote: Quote: Quote: Or a character is introduced to drive a single plot and then has no use afterwards.Quote: Quote: Quote:Quote: Fun list, and some fun comics discussion!Quote: The original had Wonder Man on it, which I'm guessing you would approve of. Quote: Speaking of characters introduced to drive a single plot point...Quote: I never really hated Simon as much as some posters, although he's really the definition of that plot-point example, two times over in fact. He was a throw-away character his first appearance (given the Wonder Man name to annoy D.C.), and then brought back to screw with the Vision's sense of identity. And then he just... hung around... and while some writers made him fun, nobody knew what to do with this extra, generic hero, and things got messy.Quote: I like the idea of the hero-as-a-would-be-star that they tried, but the thing is the character was too defined as other things before they got to that point. He's really the ideal kind of character to do as an "Ultimate" version, because he has so many false starts that could be pruned away until you had a character with a clear point and purpose... but then, that's not what the Ultimate Universe ever did well anyway.I enjoyed his time with the West Coast Avengers, watching him go from insecure to confident to cocky. It was a nice progression. Quote: Mostly, these days it's just sad to see that the Vision has been so totally wiped out of the Marvel Universe, and Wonder Man's mostly a reminder of this for me. All of the Vision's relationships have been stripped away and hung on other characters. (The entirety of the conflict with Ultron has been shifted to Pym, despite Ultron's origin being mostly a subplot in the introduction of the Vision. Not surprisingly, once Simon came back, the Grim Reaper's focus shifted to him. They moved Wanda's relationship with Vizh into more of a Wonder-man subplot, and they made his twin boys entirely Wanda's kids, with him never being mentioned any longer when discussing them.)Yeah, teen Vision just isn't the same. At all. Quote: But then I remind myself that I pretty much have to go back to the 70's to when the Vision that I liked was in comics. Kudos to Bob Harris for beginning to bring him back in the 90's, but then Heroes Reborn happened and that was the complete end of him. Considering the amount of time that has passed, I think the wounds have scabbed over.  To me Vision and the Scarlet Witch will always be one of those "eternal" couples, like Cyclops and Jean...wait, no, like Peter and Mary Jane...nope, Daredevil and Karen Page...umm...Luke Cage and Jessica Jones? I keep waiting for Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman to split up; they're the only "meant to be" (in my mind, anyway) couple still around. It's funny how the movie versions of the characters feature the classic romances, but almost none of them still exist in the actual comics. ~Hat~ | |||||||
