I’ve been out of the loop on the current DC & Marvel Universes for some time now. This article seem to imply that much has re-booted. Asgard is gone? What’s going on?
It hasn’t been rebooted; stuff has just changed. Asgard was gone for a while before the recent Thor relaunch, for example. Prior to that Thor was its king for a while.
The only character who’s really been “rebooted” (and it’s really more of a “soft reboot”) is Spider-Man, who basically had his clock turned back twenty-five years or so.
DC is a whole other can of worms. Bendis and Millar can be very, very, very bad, but at least they can write and occasionally turn out cool stuff. Geoff Johns, not so much.
Green Lantern: Rebirth was good.
–Cliffy
You can definitely argue that House of M and Civil War sucked (and IMHO it’s pretty much a given that Brand New Day did), but this quote from the article:
…essentially answers its own question. 40 years of history means 40 years of constant storytelling around a single continuity, which means that, yes, comic writers today are a bit lacking in ideas for these characters, because everything has been done before, in some way or another. You can’t change the characters, because the characters are the company and the brand, so lately they’ve been exercising another option, and changing the world around the characters. They’ve been doing it quite a lot lately, true, but maybe they’re just trying to get it all out of their systems in one go before they settle into a new continuity a bit.
Also, epics sell issues. But that’s not their only reason.
QFT. Also, Sinestro War and Green Lantern in general under Johns has been very very good. Much better than most of Marvel, IMHO.
Epic sells issues now… but it’s like adrenaline rushes: you can only take so much before the body starts to damage itself.
So’s Jones’ Flash. Best. Flash EVER.
Very much agreed. That’s why I’m hoping they’ll lay off the juice for a bit, once the dust settles.
both companies have re-booted so much recently, you’d think Bill Gates was in charge of them.
I thought Rebirth was vile aside from the gorgeous art.
Evil yellow space cockroach who eroded Hal Jordan’s confidence by making his hair grey. :smack:
I see it as pretty representative of what a hack Johns is.
*Edit: I do agree that Flash was his best work. Which is kind of like saying that Teen Titans or something was Rob Liefeld’s best work.
But the* Justice Society Of America *will be cherished by me, as long as we have comics.
Reboots or no.
I got shy guy’s back. I haven’t read a single thing by Johns that I thought rated above average, and I’ve read a lot that I thought was crap. OTOH, I liked Civil War (except for the ending).
It’s millenialism. Everything these days if it is an epic has to be cataclysmic. There are no more epic adventures, people are ALWAYS saving the world or at least living through massive changes.
See, in that respect I find Marvel is a little refreshing when compared to DC (I’m primarily a DC reader).
Goodness knows Secret Invasion has its problems, but at least it was just sort of a big goofy alien invasion story and knew that’s what it was. Likewise World War Hulk. Nobody is going to accuse it of being great literature, but it was colorful and silly and didn’t take itself too seriously.
DC events have been a) ridiculously numerous and b) ridiculously large in scope for about five years now. The Mighty Morphin’ Power Lanterns thing they have going on is at least sort of refreshing for not involving thirty parallel universes, sixty years of continuity, and Ultra the Muli-Alien. Final Crisis crumbled under the weight of its own pretentiousness about three pages in.
Rebirth was okay. What came after, with the Sinestro Corps War and the lead-in to Blackest Night has been fantastic. Flash had been superb. JSA has been solid, and though declined somewhat lately, was very good before that. Heck, even Hawkman was good. His Booster Gold was fun. His work with the LSH over in Action has been pretty good.
Johns has a good grasp of why people like these characters, and manages to stick to that without throwing out past history.
Marvel, on the other hand… they’ve been going through their characters with a buzzsaw for quite some time now, trying to hack them into something different.
It’s certainly a valid editorial viewpoint. But not one that I have any interest in. I’ll take Johns any day.
Oh, and Blue Beetle was very good as well.
I agree, Blue Beetle was a fun little series. But Johns never wrote it, as I recall. He did write a really bad storyarc in Booster Gold dealing with the various Beetles.
Really bad? Gotta disagree on that point.
I’m siding with Lightray.