You see Tom Brevoort on the "Avengers Assemble" extra on the dvd Ultimate Avengers and you have to ask how insulting he can be about the writing and characterisation of Silver Age creators such as Stan Lee. Marvel led the way in building continuity (a lesson DC could have learnt back then) and characterisation.
But Brevoort dismisses all this work that help build up Marvel Comics and give him his fat salary and career of brown-nosing. I don't really care because I've read the tweets he put out against Rob Liefeld and others and his behaviour is on the record. The worst type of company man, in my opinion. Or as he puts it....
In the excellent Marvel Comics The Untold Story which I reviewed on CBO, it is revealed how things got worse in the early 1970s. By that time the fans had gotten into comics and the old pros who knew what they were doing were treated like crap. As Don Heck is quoted as saying in the book "What the f*** do they care what the old guy say?" And Heck was a talent crapped on by many -including Roy Thomas who now says he regrets how he treated Heck.
(in case you missed the re-post)
http://hoopercomicart.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/re-post-marvel-comics-untold-story-must.html
From price hikes "because of printing costs" that were really to "screw every cent" from fans to writers and creators acting like spoilt little primadonnas -foot-stamping and skreeching -lying to editors and even by-passing their editors to get work he would not pass to the printers.
As I've noted before, these same people jumped ship to DC Comics. They did the same there before jumping back to Marvel and eventually back to DC again where they continue their anti-Marvel sniping.
While the Justice League of America, which I liked, had no real characterisation and the most rudimentary of plots, The Avengers had characterisation, good plotting -some of it cosmic in nature and even the art seemed better. I've read all the 1960s-1960s-early 1980s JLAs and there was the odd good story but, boy, were they preachy. Really in your face liberal peachy -while wearing concrete boots. I think Denny O'Neil has been vastly over-rated as "second only to Stan Lee"....O'Neil scoops up and recycles Lee's excretia.
I don't mean to be too harsh.
Well.....
Anyway, The Avengers title was superior in many ways to the JLA though both, as I've said, are close to my heart -particularly the annual JLA -Justice Society of America team ups.
Although I loved JLA when Maguire became its artist I think the humour grew very thin, very quickly. Giffen, DeMatteis and Maguire seemed to become a one trick pony. Over twenty years later they had a stint on The Defenders and under the credits was written "How much longer can they get away with writing this stuff?"
An adventure title is an adventure title. A little humour now and then -okay. Sadly, their run on JLA defined the title for years -much like the slapstick TV Batman did for that character.
But the plots and art on The Avengers, give or take the odd "iffy" issue, was allways good and, as noted earlier, ranged from the schemes of Kang The Conqueror, Zemo and the Masters of Evil to Thanos, Ultron (in his various incarnations) and The Kree-Skrull War which, as Stan Lee wrote in the intro to the book, dealt with conflict and plot on such a scale it would cost "millions of dollars" if it was a movie. A point I think proven all these years later by Avengers Assemble.
The changes in the Avengers rosters led to that period when it seemed in-fighting and "lesser" members might see the team vanish -around issue 16 when Captain America (the REAL one) was in charge of Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye and then Hercules, Goliath and the Wasp. And every few years a crisis might cause a change in the membership.
And, yes, there were continuity problems. But in what is truly a masterwork, Kurt Busiek wrote Avengers Forever and sorted out all the continuity problems and Carlos Pacheco and Jesus Merino beautifully illustrated the 12 issue series -later a trade.
In case you've never heard of this series (it did run from 1998-1999 after all) there is a run down of it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avengers_Forever
So things were sorted out after that awful and abortive 13 issue run by Liefeld, Valentino et al. So awful that even blind people were stopped from buying copies. It was supposed to give the "young guns" a chance to make big money for Marvel but was a flop. 1996-1997 was not a good Avengers period.
As a kid I remember going to a newsagents in Stokes Croft where I used pocket money to buy plastacine and comics. I recall seeing Avengers 61. I bought it. Got it home and read through it. WHO the heck was this Panther character? For that matter who or what was this Vision?? And Dr Strange...wore a full face mask??! I can't see a comic having that effect on a youngster today -most comics are now in speciality stores, are very violent and....well.
So, the "young guns" truly ***** it all up. What did Marvel do? They called in Busiek and Perez and at last, after a long time, the real Avengers were back. It was fun, action -excellent art and story/script. Then they told Busiek and Perez to get lost.
But Brevoort dismisses all this work that help build up Marvel Comics and give him his fat salary and career of brown-nosing. I don't really care because I've read the tweets he put out against Rob Liefeld and others and his behaviour is on the record. The worst type of company man, in my opinion. Or as he puts it....
In the excellent Marvel Comics The Untold Story which I reviewed on CBO, it is revealed how things got worse in the early 1970s. By that time the fans had gotten into comics and the old pros who knew what they were doing were treated like crap. As Don Heck is quoted as saying in the book "What the f*** do they care what the old guy say?" And Heck was a talent crapped on by many -including Roy Thomas who now says he regrets how he treated Heck.
(in case you missed the re-post)
From price hikes "because of printing costs" that were really to "screw every cent" from fans to writers and creators acting like spoilt little primadonnas -foot-stamping and skreeching -lying to editors and even by-passing their editors to get work he would not pass to the printers.
As I've noted before, these same people jumped ship to DC Comics. They did the same there before jumping back to Marvel and eventually back to DC again where they continue their anti-Marvel sniping.
While the Justice League of America, which I liked, had no real characterisation and the most rudimentary of plots, The Avengers had characterisation, good plotting -some of it cosmic in nature and even the art seemed better. I've read all the 1960s-1960s-early 1980s JLAs and there was the odd good story but, boy, were they preachy. Really in your face liberal peachy -while wearing concrete boots. I think Denny O'Neil has been vastly over-rated as "second only to Stan Lee"....O'Neil scoops up and recycles Lee's excretia.
I don't mean to be too harsh.
Well.....
Anyway, The Avengers title was superior in many ways to the JLA though both, as I've said, are close to my heart -particularly the annual JLA -Justice Society of America team ups.
Although I loved JLA when Maguire became its artist I think the humour grew very thin, very quickly. Giffen, DeMatteis and Maguire seemed to become a one trick pony. Over twenty years later they had a stint on The Defenders and under the credits was written "How much longer can they get away with writing this stuff?"
An adventure title is an adventure title. A little humour now and then -okay. Sadly, their run on JLA defined the title for years -much like the slapstick TV Batman did for that character.
But the plots and art on The Avengers, give or take the odd "iffy" issue, was allways good and, as noted earlier, ranged from the schemes of Kang The Conqueror, Zemo and the Masters of Evil to Thanos, Ultron (in his various incarnations) and The Kree-Skrull War which, as Stan Lee wrote in the intro to the book, dealt with conflict and plot on such a scale it would cost "millions of dollars" if it was a movie. A point I think proven all these years later by Avengers Assemble.
The changes in the Avengers rosters led to that period when it seemed in-fighting and "lesser" members might see the team vanish -around issue 16 when Captain America (the REAL one) was in charge of Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye and then Hercules, Goliath and the Wasp. And every few years a crisis might cause a change in the membership.And, yes, there were continuity problems. But in what is truly a masterwork, Kurt Busiek wrote Avengers Forever and sorted out all the continuity problems and Carlos Pacheco and Jesus Merino beautifully illustrated the 12 issue series -later a trade.
In case you've never heard of this series (it did run from 1998-1999 after all) there is a run down of it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avengers_Forever
So things were sorted out after that awful and abortive 13 issue run by Liefeld, Valentino et al. So awful that even blind people were stopped from buying copies. It was supposed to give the "young guns" a chance to make big money for Marvel but was a flop. 1996-1997 was not a good Avengers period.
As a kid I remember going to a newsagents in Stokes Croft where I used pocket money to buy plastacine and comics. I recall seeing Avengers 61. I bought it. Got it home and read through it. WHO the heck was this Panther character? For that matter who or what was this Vision?? And Dr Strange...wore a full face mask??! I can't see a comic having that effect on a youngster today -most comics are now in speciality stores, are very violent and....well.
So, the "young guns" truly ***** it all up. What did Marvel do? They called in Busiek and Perez and at last, after a long time, the real Avengers were back. It was fun, action -excellent art and story/script. Then they told Busiek and Perez to get lost.
Just like DC and its constant re-booting, Marvel just had to salivate and almost have rushes of orgasm just thinking of money -***** the fans -they WANTED money. And so we had Avengers Disassembled.
I do apologise -I just vomitted over my keyboard at the very thought. At This point, with this plot line the Avengers were truly dead.
Then we had Dark Avengers....oh, it just became a mess after that.
But then The Heroic Age was born and plots developed and it seemed like decent books were on the way...but the Heroic Age just vanished. Plots lost. Was Kang or Immortus responsible???
Now, I just do not care what volume we are at any more. 2014 will see it all rebooted. But currently, Marvel is going for more Science Fiction style stories. Nice art but....I dropped the title with no. 13.
The same old writers, re-churning ideas and lets not forget: the characters must conform to the movie characters now.
And this crap has even extended to TV shows such as Avengers: Earths Mightiest Heroes -this was fun, brought in a lot of the old Marvel style and characters and had two series.
But cancelled after series two to become what seems like a limp 1980s animated show -the animation is good but the plots and situations vary from bad to dire -but they conform to the movie (and they added the Falcon so there was a black member, even if he is a bit of a fan boy in this). Characterisation, plot and dialogue is ass gravy.
And, like, feck continuity!
If you want to read good Avengers comics grab The Essential series books -some of the art in these look even better in black and white!
The Avengers will be killed off, rebooted ad nauseum. Disney own Marvel now and Disney loves money and has no integrity. The people working at Marvel have no integrity.
The good old days are gone.
If you have your own super hero comic or are building up your own comics universe, well, this is your chance to grab young and old alike and entertain them. If you can get them to the readers.
Well, George Perez left Avengers and then worked at CrossGen but Kurt Busiek stayed on the book for two more years. Which are volumes 4 and 5 of AVENGERS ASSEMBLE with art by Alan Davis, Kieron Dwyer and Ivan Reis. Man, Alan Davis´ art looks so much better than his current stuff on WOLVERINE it´s depressing.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, Kurt Busiek and George Perez later on did JLA / Avengers together because George had enough leeway at CrossGen that they let him do it. But you´re right, in the end the guys at Marvel said f - word all of this, we don´t want to make good comics, we want to make money. And lots of it.
In any case in a few years when it has all crashed and burned somebody at Marvel will remember, you know we did some great comics back then, why did we stop ? And they will look for creators who can pull this off but Perez does his own thing now ( Thank god ! ) and Kurt Busiek will hopefully write ASTRO CITY full time at that point.
Hi. Yep, you are right but there was a press statement from Marvel of Busiek 'saying' he was quitting Avengers because some other comic writer was better -a writer not even doing the Avengers??? I read that and though **** off. No way he said that because he is a far better writer than the guy he mentioned (some new Marvel discovery).
ReplyDeleteI was hoping a few people might pick me up on the points in question but I thought "I bet only Subzero comments!!"
Look at the vlogs of some fans now and they have NEVER heard of Avengers Forever or half the Marvel characters -or that some in the current Avengers were former New Mutants or from the New Universe.
Face it,man, were die alten Männer here -and I'm OLDER than you?!?!!!!