The only “Focus” book I’ve been reading is Hard Time, and only because Gerber (my all-time favorite comics writer) is writing it. Are the others worth trying?
What’s with the backlash against Chuck Austen? I haven’t seen this kind of reaction from the readers since Bill Mantlo and Gerry Conway overstayed their welcome on a couple of titles in the early 80s. His plots are lively and his dialogue is crisp. Where’s all the hatin’ coming from?
Plots involving, for example, evil disintegrating communion wafers.
Chuck Austin keeps getting hired because he can produce a mediocre generic superhero script in the time it took me to write this post. He makes it easy to meet your publishing deadline and get those X-Books on the stand on time each month. And because Brian Michael Bendis can only write 20 titles each month, so they have to get someone to write the two dozen X-Books.
Does Marvel have no editorial control? I knew they’d undo Magneto’s death, but there ought to be a respectable period of time before they do it. When Doom gets killed or exiled to hell in FF, you can usually count on his being gone for a couple of years before they bring him back. And the way it was done makes is just a slap in the face to everything Morrison was doing.
I’m in favor of giving the creators the freedom to do their own stories their own way, and not having the stories dictated from on high, but there needs to be some editorial control. Like, the real Magneto is dead, so nobody gets to use him for the next two years.
The following is all IMO, of course and I understand that everyone’s mileage may (and does! 
) vary,
That said, there are two answers. For me personally, the reason I dislike his stuff is:
I find his take on characters totally off–I’ve yet to read a Chuck Austen book where his characters sound right.
To start, his Superman sounds nothing like what Superman should–and Supes is about the easiest character to…characterize. Plotting stories for Superman can be difficult, but getting the “voice” and attitude right? Doesn’t come any easier to do. He’s a slightly stiff boyscout with a very gentle sense of humor.Before Austen got a permanant Superman assignment, he wrote that horrible (IMO) story where Superman goes completely psycho (a "HULK SMASH! style rampage through Metropolis, causing untold damage) because a kid died of cancer. It was kind of like the opposite of “The Kid Who Collected Spider-Man”, except that “The Kid” showed that Peter was a caring guy deep down and Austen’s story showed that Supes was a psycho-control freak-lunatic who’s really kind of a dick with anger management issues. And “The Kid” was one of the best Spidey stories ever and this was one of the worst Superman stories. Check out that link for a devestaing review of how badly out of character that issue was.
Ditto his Captain America: completely wrong somehow. The interaction between him and the kid who’s mommy died in Avengers was cringe-worthy.
His “War Machine” series was one of the the single worst mini-series ever written, right up there in badness with that silly “4” FF book that’s out now where Reed is too dumb to figure out how to keep a job.
His Juggernaut doesn’t jibe or make any sense compared to any other iteration of the character…Juggernaut isn’t a frail, shy person with anger management issues…he’s an opportunist. He’s in it for the money (although he should have some issues with Professor X) And this Juggy’s weird relationship with Lagoon Boy (or whatever th’ kid’s name is) is somehow becoming more and more very vaguely creepy.
Plus his She-Hulk is completely off: no way would Jen have slept with Juggurnaut. : yuk : eeew. I can only assume mind-control. Or maybe she was replaced by a space-phantom.
He’s ignoring something like 50 issues of careful character development that Busiek put into fixing Hank Pym’s anger-management issues and fixing the Hank/Jan relationship–it’s WAY too soon to revisit what Busiek spent all those issues fixing (plus he had some major continuity screw-ups…why doesn’t Hank know that everyone at his trial saw Jan’s black eye and knew exactly what it was…he was at his trial, after all). And the idea that Jan would be…interested in/attracted to Hawkeye almost as out of character than the idea that She-Hulk would f*ck the Juggernaut.
His Hawkeye’s wildely wrong to the point where I can only assume he’s a space-phantom too–Hawkeye’s against killing. He’s so much against killing that he divorced his wife when she allowed her rapist to die (I didn’t like that story particularly, but it’s a pivotal issue in Hawkeye’s life). So why would Hawkeye commit attempted murder on three helpless captives, however evil? Hawkeye’s easy going. He shouldn’t have anger-management issues. I mean, he shot explosive arrows designed by Tony Stark to take down Asgardians into a jail cell where three prisoners were helplessly incarcerated. That’s attempted murder and it’s way out of character. And why isn’t anyone trying to jail him for it?
Reading Austen’s books are like reading weird Bizarro-world versions of the characters–except that Bizarros are y’know…entertaining where as all of Austen’s characters are…well…assholes with anger-management issues.
(an aside: Gerry Conway had the same problem, but it was limited to team books. On solo characters, (Daredevil, Spider-Man, Batman, Firestorm) he was pretty good (Conway’s Daredevil run is one of the key runs, as is his Spider-Man). On team books though he sucked to high heaven for similar reasons to Austen–totally “off” characterization and inability to handle the larger casts AND a desire to bring in characters no-one else cared about…but he kept writing team books. His FF is probably the single worst period in FF history (and I’m counting the “Fantastic Force” stuff), his Legion stuff was probably the worst period in Legion history (and I’m counting the “Five Years Later” period where the DC editors would change continuity quite literally every single issue issue), his Justice Leagues are the single worst period in Justice League history (and they’re so bad that I can’t find another run to compare them to–I mean, Vibe, Gypsy and Vixen?!), his Justice Society was the worst in JSA history, to the extent that the next writer had to explain some of the characterization screw-ups as “brain damage” and have the character get brain-surgery to correct it (seriously–it was Wildcat). Conway was not good with teams. Austen, while not as bad shares many of the same weaknesses. )
And, Austen’s plots never flow correctly for me and I don’t find them interesting (the death-cookie take on the communion wafer was Jack Chick style wrong and stupid). Austen’s early X-Men, the stuff he did pre-Age of Apocolypse (IIRC–low 400s maybe? where the White Queen ended up posessing Iceman’s body? that stuff) wasn’t bad at all. But as he’s spreading himself thinner and thinner and he assimilates more books and his stuff gets weaker and weaker.
For fandom in general, the hating (IMO) comes from some of the above, compounded by:
Austen’s writing like 12 titles right now, since for some reason TPTB at DC and Marvel think he’s the next best thing to Neil Gaiman and I think that part of the backlash (in addition to everything else) comes from the fact that he’s everywhere. He’s on two or three of the X-Books, Avengers, Superman, Invaders, he’s takin’ over Justice League (wheeee. :rolleyes: ), I think he’s getting (or has gotten) a couple more high-profile assignments. A bad writer is just annoying but a bad writer who’s omnipresent? That generates backlash.
And all this is further exacerbated by the fact that Austen’s had a number of interviews where he really, really went out of his way to say that anyone who disliked any aspect of his work was stuid, a troll, a sexually unfullilled deviant, an asshole or all of the above (paraphrased, but close) and that he doesn’t like the fan community.
Two quotes that I’ve repeatedly seen that are claimed to be his are:
Assuming these are actual quotes, the man has…issues and does not know how to win friends or influence people. I’ve personally seen an interview where he comes out and point-blank says he writes stuff with the single intention of hoping to piss off fans, who, being such nerds, will buy two issues-one to burn and one to put in a latex bag. Which pretty much jibes with the two alleged quotes above and makes him sound like a troll. (It also didn’t work-he got kicked off the Avengers due to abysmal sales and Avengers is one of the highest profile assignments. Also, from what I’ve heard (I haven’t seen numbers) the sales of the X-Books have dropped to near pre-Morrison levels under Austen. So the shock-value “piss off the fanboys” school of writing doesn’t seem to be working so much)
Which issues stuck out as particularly good to you Krokodil?
Fenris
On preview: Number Six-Regarding editorial control at Marvel, no editor has ever been able to really control Claremont since about X-Men 200. It’s sad, because when he’s got a stronger editor (Bob Harris) his stuff gets better and when he’s got an incompetent editor who doesn’t even make the attempt (Ann Noncenti(sp) ) his stuff turns to self-indulgent crap. In the olden days when he had Byrne as a co-writer, whatshisname as editor and a very controlling Jim Shooter as Ed. In Chief, he was downright good. Some writers seem to thrive on freedom (Alan Moore, for example) whereas others do best when given constraints (Claremont and Garth Ennis for example)
I thought Strips really rocked, although that’s getting to be 20 years ago. More recently, my only problem with Avengers was any subplot involving Hank Pym getting hounded for things that happened when Shooter wrote the book, or getting cuckolded by Hawkeye (who stood up for Hank during those old Shooter stories). I think I know where he was going with this (A new relationship with Jan where she doesn’t have some kind of moral superiority to hang over his head any more), but with the impending arrival of Bendis, we’ll never know.
I quite like the new Captain Britain and the new Invaders.
“An Avenger will die.” I assumed it was Scott Lang, but it’s starting to look more like Hank Pym.
Fenris: I see you’ve listed Batman Adventures as consistently the best Batbook. My favorite was pretty consistently Nightwing until Grayson decided to rewrite the Daredevil Born Again story.
Anyway, I’ve never read it, but I’m going to check it out on your recommendation. Were the previous versions (Gotham Adventures, Batman and Robin Adventures) any good? There are a couple of long runs of those available on E-bay and if they’re any good I might use some of the money I made this morning at a swap meet (people will pay an insane amount for an Amazing Spider-Man #36) and pick up a set or two.
Which is still two or three years older than she was when she was banging Colossus, so it’s actually a bit of an improvement.
Ha! 
(It’s funny 'cause it’s true! 
)
Yup, and the earlier you go, the better they get. They generally feature single issue stories or two-parters (and occasionally even have two stories in a single issue)*, a Batman who’s intense, driven, smart, a detective first and a fighter second but occasionally smiles and who’s not a psycho, villians with human motivations (the whole modern Mr. Freeze thing where he’s a scientist with a wife rather than a thug who had an accident came from this series), and while some of 'em are heartbreaking some of 'em are hysterical.
They also influenced a bunch of stuff in the regular books, (Harley got her start here, they gave what’shisname…the guy with the “Scarface” dummy a personality, I’m pretty sure that the whole Ras Al Guhl is an eco-terrorist (not just a world-conquerer came outta these books too, etc)
The ones that feature Paul Dini, Ty Templeton, Mike Parobek and/or Rich Burchett are the best. Parobek coulda been one of the all-time greats before his demise.
There’s a story that was going around (I don’t know if it’s true, but I believe it) that during Denny O’Neill’s reign as uber-Bat-Editor when he was trying to cash in on his creation Bane (bleh!) he force the “animated” book to change it’s name from (IIRC) “Batman and Robin Adventures” to “Gotham Adventures” 'cause it was waaaaay outselling the regular Bat-Books. Per the rumor, Templeton point blank said that O’Neill was trying to sabotage the “animated” book by chosing a very new-user unfriendly name (Think about it: a kid watches “Batman Adventures” and goes out to look for the comic book. How many kids would think of “Gotham Adventures”?). I’d swear I read a Usenet post by Templeton about that at one point, and I can see a reference to it when I search, but apparently the actual post was “x-no archived”.
Anyway, there’re some ups and downs in the “animated” series, of course but I think you’ll enjoy 'em. And, like I said upthread, IMO, it’s the only place to consistantly read about “Batman” anymore (as opposed to the grim psychotic guy who usually (but not always) appears in the regular bat-books)
Fenris
*Writing good short-stories is much harder than writing good multi-part epics. It’s harder to hide mistakes and mischaracterizations.
PS: I don’t get the love for Spider-Man #36. It’s the one bad JMS issue of an otherwise stellar run on Spider-Man, IMO. I found it maudlin and featured way-out-of-character characters. I mean, Dr. Doom…who has death-camps and sends 5 year old children to Hell (literally) sees some useless people (in Doc Doom’s opinion) die and bursts into tears? Dr. Doom?? Not so much. And in the context of the Marvel Universe, 9/11 was diddly-squat compared to, say, the Kree-Skrull war, an Atlantis Invasion, what Magneto did to NY in his last Morrison story, etc. Can someone help me understand the appeal of that issue?
FenrisThanks for the info; I’ll be checking those out.
Another question. Are the Superman Adventures or Justice League Adventures any good?
For me, the appeal of Spider-Man #36 is that I can sell them for 20x what I paid for them.
As a story, it surely doesn’t work. I mean, come on, Dr. Doom is a terrorist; if it served his ends, he’d destroy a good portion of New York himself.
Ditto what Fenris said; the earlier Batman animated comic books are damn good, and the stuff available today is merely very good. Not that I’ll sneeze on it, but this is a title where it’s worth a trip to the bargain bins.
I thought Superman Adventures was okay, but not as good as the earlier Batman Adventures material. I think Batman’s darker and more ironic storytelling works in its advantage here.
No experience with the Justice League Adventures to comment, sorry.
Re: The 'Mazing Man-Spider. Gwen Stacy? Peter Parker?!?
Noooooooooo! The freakin’ clones are back! Didn’t they learn anything the last time they did this?
Double agreement on the Adventures series
Also, I just picked up DC: New Frontiers. Good comic. It’s a lot like a successor… though not a sequel, to the classic The Golden Age.
They’re both…ok, IMO, but they never attracted the talent (Templeton! Burchett! Parobek! Dini!) that the Bat-Adventures books did.
:: snerk ::
A) There’s at least 3 Gwen clones left over, one of whom is married to a Professor Warren clone ( :eek: :: yuk :: ) and I think there’s one or two Peter clones left, not including Kaine (why “Kaine”? Shouldn’t (if they’re going for the “evil brother” thing) it be “Cain”? And is he dead or what?) and another disfigured one too.
B) I trust JMS. If this was any other writer I’d be tearing my hair out, but given that th’ guy’s done like 3 or 4 years on the book with only one bad (and it wasn’t awful, just…eh) book (#36) he’s built up enough…trust…with me that I’m willing to give him a chance. Hell, maybe he can make some sense of it.
C) That said, I’m not positive they are clones. This is the Marvel universe, after all. They could be…I dunno. Space Phantoms. Skrulls. Parallel World duplicates. Time-Lost astral bodies, robots (remember the “Peter’s mom and dad come back but they’re robots with gears ‘n’ stuff but so damned sophisitcated that Dr Strange and Reed Richards couldn’t tell” story?), a typical Mysterio mindf*ck, illusion generating ninja assassins, there’s a couple of stories that say that NONE of them were clones, they were (even in the original issues) a result of a DNA-altering virus…catch it and you become Gwen or Miles or Peter…the High Evolutionary actually confirmed that the Gwen/Peter clones from Spidey #150-ish weren’t clones and cured the “Gwen Clone” who went back to her non-Gwen life(they never reconcilled this in the Clone story). So there’s a lot of possibilities. And I thought that Marvel had a firm “We will never mention the clone saga again. Ever” policy.
IIRC, when JMS came on, they wanted him badly enough that they made a more-or-less unprecesidented deal: he’d have a completely free hand to do whatever he wanted with a couple of caveats: he wasn’t allowed to re-kill Aunt May or say that the whole crappy Byrne run* was a dream/hoax/imaginary story (tho’ he could ignore it), he wasn’t allowed to screw with stuff that would affect licensing or alienate people who’d seen the movies and were trying out the books, and he wasn’t allowed to reference the Clone saga.
Here’s a cover to an upcoming issue that Marvel released as a teaser.
E-Sabbath-I agree. New Frontiers is probably my current favorite DC book at the moment. And in an interview somewhere, the writer point-blank said that he considered it to be an unofficial sequel to "The Golden Age’! Good catch! I love the way the artist has such a good feel for early '60s/late '50s design, clothing, furniture, hair styles…that sort of detail adds so much to a book.
Fenris
*The Byrne run: “No, that wasn’t Aunt May who died, it was an actress so devoted to her craft that she replaced May for about 40 issues (and no-one noticed) who was willing to be killed, just so she could have that wonderfully written deathbed scene with Peter that really eased his pain, relieved his guilt at Uncle Ben’s death and gave him peace and closure–which, of course is exactly the sort of plot that the Goblin should be involved in. Oh, and the Goblin’s been alive all these years. Whose corpse was buried around issue 124? Don’t know, don’t care. Oh, and Sandman is related to Osborne 'cause they have the same haircut. Oh, and it wasn’t just a spider-bite, it was a thermonuclear explosion in downtown Manhattan that gave Pete his powers but killed hundreds or thousands of other people and Peter’s the only survivor but flew beneath the press’s radar somehow. Oh and there’s a magic box that convinces everyone who looks in it that Mary Jane is actually dead. despite all evidence to the contrary…but we won’t let the readers look in it. It’s secret.” :rolleyes:
Huh. A follow-up. Per JMS, “Just for the record: there are no clones in the Sins Past title, anywhere, at all. I’m not touching that storyline.”, so I guess they are time-travelling astral projections of parallel-universe ninjas in robot bodies!
Geez! I leave for half a week, and someone starts a more popular Comic Book Thread than mine! I mean, look at the responses!
Mine this week:
City of Heroes #1 - finally arrived in the mail. not bad.
GI Joe Reloaded #4 - Have I mentioned this is good?
Conan #5 - Still very good, very close to the Conan Spirit… just not a lot of new development this issue, felt a little slow.
Excalibur #2 - Well, okay, he’s back. That’s good, because he’s a nice character. Could stand to be in a better book though.
Astonishing X-Men #2 - 'Nuff said already.
Wonder Woman #205 - I expected an actual Joker cameo. I feel cheated,
Witches #2 - Better than #1. I’ll probably keep buying it.
Robin #126, #127 - I think I just became a regular Robin reader, really.
Superman #206 - Zee zee zee - no, that’s not a signal watch, that’s me falling asleep reading this.
Teen Titans #12 - Nice to see Raven back. Again. Again. Young Justice was better.
Wanted #4 - Strangely interesting book, but it’s so horrifically mean-spirited. But I’m hooked.
The Witching #1 - I was waffling on liking or disliking the book… it had some nice touches, but the art’s not spectacular - but the ending panel sold me. Tempted to try the drink recipe too.
The big news in this week’s comic buys is there’s a new Savage Henry book out. This is excellent news because Matt Howarth hasn’t put anything out in about five years, so it’s great to see new material by him.
I also got the second issue of Secret War (which I know came out earlier) and I have a question. I haven’t kept up on recent X-Comix so I was very surprised by the portrayal of Wolverine as basically a bumbling drunk. Was this just an out of character portrayal by one writer or has Wolverine undergone some major personaility changes in recent years?
Oh yeah, I also got the last issue of the Thessaly mini-series. I didn’t like the ending:
[spoiler]After having been told repeatedly that Tharmic Nulls are unstoppable, this one got stopped all too easily. In the DC world, ghosts are common enough that at least one must have tried to fight a Tharmic Null before.
I also didn’t like the silliness of the final scene with the reanimated corpses. I think the series would have ended better on a sombre note rather than trying to close with a joke.[/spoiler]
I’ve already sent an email to Czarcasm, but if any other moderators come along before then, could you fix the tags in my previous post? Thank you.