Comics Stuff

Kanye Qwest

@Kanye-Qwest
I agree some of the reactions I have seen are a bit much. Let the story finish before tearing it apart, and the mind control plot is not new to comics or Cap himself.

And slight correction on Caps creation he was not created to show the defeat of what amounts to Nazis but literal Nazis it was 1941 after all.

No, he was created to defeat "Hydra", which, while clearly a Nazi standin, is not a sovereign government led by Adolf Hitler.

But right, as Coin said - those Superman stories were elseworlds. And while I'm sure this Cap storyline will end up impermanent, or retconned, or banished to an alternate timeline...for now, that's not how they are presenting it. They are saying the real, no-bullshit Captain America has been a Hydra (Nazi) agent all along.

ThatGuyThere

@Kanye-Qwest said in Comics Stuff:

@ThatGuyThere said in Comics Stuff:

@Kanye-Qwest
I agree some of the reactions I have seen are a bit much. Let the story finish before tearing it apart, and the mind control plot is not new to comics or Cap himself.

And slight correction on Caps creation he was not created to show the defeat of what amounts to Nazis but literal Nazis it was 1941 after all.

No, he was created to defeat "Hydra", which, while clearly a Nazi standin, is not a sovereign government led by Adolf Hitler.
.

Read the reprints of the orginial stuff he was created in 1941 by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon to fight Nazis Adolf Hitler himself appears in numerous Golden Age cap stories. As does Benito Mussolini.
http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/captain-america
Follow that like it has most of the covers in the history of Captain America right there on the first one from March of 1941 are Nazis including Adolf himself.
Hydra is created in the 1960s mainly to torment Nick Fury in the pages of Strange Tales then branches off to Cap and the rest of the Marvel universe.

Kanye Qwest

@ThatGuyThere I stand corrected!

Bobotron

Unrelated to Cap, but my hype level just went over 9000.

New Cardcaptor Sakura sequel series.
http://en.rocketnews24.com/2016/04/27/cardcaptor-sakuras-new-manga-isnt-a-one-shot-side-story-but-a-sequel-series-set-to-start-soon/

Thenomain

@Arkandel

Three people have written Spider-Man for the movies, so I'm not sure how you can say one person writes for the movies. They're getting reset once every few years. Movies put you in the situation where you are potentially resetting expectations with each one.

TV shows, now....

Coin

@Thenomain said in Comics Stuff:

@Arkandel

Three people have written Spider-Man for the movies, so I'm not sure how you can say one person writes for the movies. They're getting reset once every few years. Movies put you in the situation where you are potentially resetting expectations with each one.

TV shows, now....

Ark didn't make a comparison to the movies, though; he made a comparison to novels.

ThatGuyThere

@Kanye-Qwest
No worries, a lot of folks don't realize that Cap was actually created in WW2 era not just backstoried in there a la Nick Fury or Sgt Rock who both were created well after the war but who had comics set during it. (Rock was created in the mid 50s, Fury in the early 60s)
One of the tidbits I like to toss out to show how far comics in general have fallen as far as the mainstream goes in 41 Cap was frequently near the top of the best selling magazine list, not comics but magazines as a whole.
Granted comics might soon be that again but only because print publishing as a whole is cratering.

Arkandel

@Kanye-Qwest said in Comics Stuff:

And while I'm sure this Cap storyline will end up impermanent, or retconned, or banished to an alternate timeline...for now, that's not how they are presenting it. They are saying the real, no-bullshit Captain America has been a Hydra (Nazi) agent all along.

I think it will be swept under the rug - not retconned per se, just not referenced again.

Same as Tony Stark having basically committed war crimes to incite Civil War over his own interests. I don't remember anyone having said a thing about that stuff in the comics for a very long time now, it's like it never happened, but it's not removed from continuity either.

Arkandel

@Thenomain said in Comics Stuff:

@Arkandel

Three people have written Spider-Man for the movies, so I'm not sure how you can say one person writes for the movies. They're getting reset once every few years. Movies put you in the situation where you are potentially resetting expectations with each one.

TV shows, now....

Yeah, basically I'm saying the same thing Allan Moore has in the past albeit less gracefully; that if two people write the same character it's not really the same character any more.

Or as an example... one person can run Punisher as a gritty realistic comic focusing on his unending war on crime, but another can have him mix it up with supervillains, give him gadgets and whacky weapons turning in a more campy story. Neither approach is 'wrong' per se (both have been done extensively in the past) even though they're both writing Frank Castle but they're fundamentally different.

Roz

Cap was in fact created at a time when there were plenty of Americans still supporting the Nazis, before the US ever entered the war. They received death threats for his creation and the depictions of him attacking and defeating Hitler. For two Jews who lived in a country that was still refusing to intervene while their family overseas in Europe were literally being slaughtered, it was a huge rebellion.

Michael Chabon fictionalized the sentiment -- if not the exact story -- in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which is one of my favorite books.

It's really this history of Cap as a creation of the Jewish people to protest their own growing genocide that really has a lot of people pissed about this.

Thenomain

@Arkandel

All good points My curiosity is still how the fan/creator/creation triangle relationship is handled in the comics space.

ThatGuyThere

@Thenomain said in Comics Stuff:

@Arkandel

All good points My curiosity is still how the fan/creator/creation triangle relationship is handled in the comics space.

Not sure exactly what you mean. But I will take a stab at it. In a lot of cases the actual creator is gone either no longer with the company or in a lot of cases with older characters passed on. Though each character is viewed to have certain core aspects that should remain the same for the most part new writers and artists to the book have leeway in making their character their own. How much leeway is usually determined by how good the results are. Ideally the editors have a the ability to maintain some consistency in the long term but that as not been the case for some time.
Best example I can think of is Swamp Thing, the character was created by Len Wein and was nothing really special perfectly serviceable comics but nothing people would say was great. Then Alan Moore took over and changed the character pretty substantially, this was loved less for the changes but more because Moore is a top notch writer. So the Moore version became the definitive version of the character. Had Moore not been good at what he did fans likely would have hated the changes. For the most part a lot of comic fans being pro or anti a specific change is liking or not liking the work and the change being the obvious lightning rod to draw those feelings.

One big difference between comics and novels is ownership of the characters, since for the most part they are considered the results of work for hire they stay with the company rather then the creator. JK Rowling owns Harry Potter granted she has a contract with a publisher that likely limits her prerogative in some ways. Compare this to the various comic creators that do not retain ownership, and in some cases most notably Bill Finger as co-creator of Batman did not even get creator credits until fall to long after the fact.

Thenomain

@ThatGuyThere

I meant more the author/writer/artist, not the original creator of, say, Iron Man who has changed massively over the years. I meant more the Iron Man that you're reading that day, which is not the Iron Man someone else writes. (This is very different from TV shows, where multiple people can write a single character very consistently. c.f., Jean-Luc Picard.) How one Iron Man is portrayed is still being portrayed, in a general sense, by its creator.

The creator/observer relationship varies widely between mediums. This is what I was talking about. Knowing that a lot of comic book creations are mandated by the publisher, I included them in the interaction spectrum, but I am trying to focus almost exclusively on the observer (reader).

The original purpose of this was to try and figure out why @Arkandel used thematic/setting reasoning to say the Captain America revelation was bullshit, when comics are and always have been riddled with similar faux pas. His approach implied, to me, that there is an internal logic to superhero comics, when a lot of what turns me off superhero comics is the complete lack of internal logic.

There can be reasoning and consistency with the inconsistencies, but I'll be quite surprised if it's the kind of internal sense that I find critical in world-building.

ThatGuyThere

@Thenomain said in Comics Stuff:

The original purpose of this was to try and figure out why @Arkandel used thematic/setting reasoning to say the Captain America revelation was bullshit, when comics are and always have been riddled with similar faux pas. His approach implied, to me, that there is an internal logic to superhero comics, when a lot of what turns me off superhero comics is the complete lack of internal logic.

In this case I think the reason is that no one has trust in Marvel that the story will turn out good. A few, including @Kanye-Qwest here, have had a wait and see approach but I have not heard anyone not on Marvel's payroll say they were excited by the story, most are along the lines of assuming the eventual mind control reveal or complaining about how horrible it is.
To use the example of Iron Man there are certain core aspects of Tony Stark he is a rich genius inventor is the most basic. The cap reveal is like if in an Ironman story it was revealed that Tony was really illiterate and faking being smart this whole time and someone else built the armor. It is not just inconstant with one or two other stories in the past but what makes Ironman fans like Iron Man.
To many people myself included what makes Cap really Cap, is that he is the best a person can be not just physically but morally as well. The ultimate good guy, and this Hydra thing is basically a giant middle finger not to a few past stories but to core of the character if it is not revealed to be mind control latter.

A lot of the disconnect mught be preferences, earlier you mentioned preferring things be story driven, and comics for the most part are very focused on being character driven. Not only the stories but how they are sold. In comics shops they are grouped not by writer or artist or publisher but by character on the new release shelves. Back issues are usually sorted alphabetically by title, the focus is on the continuing book more so then on the creators.
That effects how new fans look at things as well. As you have said game design is mind control, in this case organization is. If you are new and go into the shop you are given messages that the character is the core product.

Edit to add : Even regular bookstores make this distinction. If I go into Barnes and Noble the books in each fiction section are arranged by author in graphic novels area it is by character. Back when we had a borders in town it was the same way.

Roz

I've also seen sentiment that people don't actually care to wait and say. That is, they're not interested in the story full stop, even predicting some sort of time travel wonkiness, hidden reveal, etc. It's just not a fake out they're interested in seeing, that it reads like just a play for controversy and attention. There are certain types of stories that go too far against the grain for what people are interested in with a character, and I think this is one of them.

I haven't read much by Nick Spencer, the writer, to have an opinion of his history, but I already dislike the editor, Tom Brevoort, for lots of various reasons, and they've both had a sort of gleeful reaction to everyone's issues that puts a bad taste in my mouth. It's this sort of "hah hah look at all the people we're making mad, we must be doing something right!!" thing. Sometimes, yes, getting divisive reactions to something might mean that you're doing something right, you're building something thoughtful that people can have strong and varied reactions to. But there does exist situations where you just piss people off and it's not because you're building a great story. Brevoort has a long history of being wildly dismissive of any and all concerns addressed to him regarding his books, though. I've seen enough of his stuff over the years that I'm just really unimpressed with his work and his reaction to criticism.

Thenomain

But isn't part of the attraction of the comics scene is that if one storyline doesn't interest you, there are other stories out there and you can wait for things to blow over?

Roz

@Thenomain I mean, as a comics reader that's never really something I've felt as a plus. It's a reality of the fandom, because there are so many stories going on and characters change hands so much, but I don't know if people are attracted to reading comics because of it.

And as much as it's a reality with so many cooks in the kitchen, it's still natural for people to be attached to their favorite characters and feel frustrated when it seems like the writing and editing really fails them. I mean, I love a lot of Kieron Gillen's work, but I was wholesale not interested when he decided to do a storyline that necessitated Tony Stark having been secretly adopted. Like, that doesn't even make sense! He's always drawn as looking exactly like Howard and people comment on the resemblance all the time! But when I dropped the book, I didn't think, "Man, it's a good thing I have other options," I thought, "This was a really dumb move and I'm dropping the book."

Thenomain

@Roz

If that isn't a plus, I would make it one. "Okay, bored with Cap for now, oh damn William Gibson has written a comic!"

See, comics for me seem like one of the more transient ways of absorbing entertainment. You don't have to be ADHD with them, but it helps?

Roz

@Thenomain I mean, maybe I'd feel that way more if I didn't always have -- uh -- a good number of books on my pull. So it's not necessarily that I drop a book and look to replace it with something specific; I just try to pull books I enjoy reading in general. If I drop a book, it's not a chance to look at something else, it's just losing out on a story I was once interested in but am no longer for whatever reason. Maybe if I had a set budget and only let myself subscribe to a certain number of books.

Thenomain

@Roz

So it's a matter of trust between the author and the reader. I can imagine if I had to go out of my way to set up a system that auto-deducted $10/week from my account, I'd be upset if I had to mess around every week tweaking it to my liking.

Incidentally, "a matter of trust between the author and the reader" is what I assumed from the start, only now it has a non-trivial measure of the reader's involvement of time, cost, etc.