I had this revelation yesterday while having a conversation with a colleague, regarding Final Crisis and Secret Invasion and how he was enjoying the concept of the latter more than the build-up to the former. He's more of a Marvel fan. I'm more of a DC fan. It went a little something like this.
Him: I'm just sick of the reboots. Writing an entire universe into a corner and then destroying said universe is not my idea of good writing, especially if your goal is to reboot said universe and say "ha ha, just kidding".
Me: Yeah. I just hated when Marvel did that with 'House of M' and 'One More Day'.
Him: Well, I didn't care for House of M or One More Day, either, so at least I'm consistent.
Me: True. And I stopped reading 'Countdown' about eight issues. The only part of 52 I liked was Lobo as The Space Pope and I haven't even bothered with 'Death of the New Gods', so it's not like I'm really enjoying most of DC right now either.
And that was when it hit me. Consider this list of generalities.
Traditional Marvel Comics (i.e. Silver Age through 1980s)
Characters emphasized over concepts. Comics more like soap operas (i.e. I wish I could afford to take Mary Jane out, but how else can I pay for Aunt May's dialysis!)
Tightly-woven universe with frequent meetings between individual characters. (i.e. This Issue: Daredevil vs. Namor, The Sub-Mariner!)
Greater number of unique female characters. (i.e. Invisible Woman, Marvel Girl and Wasp vs. Wonder Woman and Black Canary)
Traditional DC Comics (i.e. Silver Age through 1980s)
Concepts emphasized over character. Comics like action movies. (i.e. What is Superman's Amazing New Power?!?!)
Individual characters pretty much in their own universe, save in team books like JLA and World's Finest. (i.e. Only The Flash can save us now!)
Prominent female heroines tied to male heroes. (Batgirl, Batman's sidekick)
Now consider where we stand today...
Modern Marvel Comics
Concept emphasized over character. Comics like action movies. (i.e. A World Where Mutants Rule! A War Over Superhero Registration!! Who Do You Trust?!?!?!)
Individual characters pretty much in their own universe, save in team books like Avengers. (i.e. How many times did New York get blown up this month?)
Prominent female heroines tied to male heroes. (Storm married to Black Panther and regulated to sidekick status, Spider-Woman and Ms. (Captain) Marvel probably most prominent female heroines)
Modern DC Comics
Character emphasized over concept. Comics like soap operas. (i.e. This month - the secret origin of Hal Jordan and his real first meeting with John Stewart!)
Tightly-woven universe with frequent meetings between individual characters. (See: Countdown - the fate of all worlds is in the hands of some characters you never really cared about... Until Now!)
Greater number of unique female characters. (i.e. Birds of Prey, Power Girl and Black Canary lead JSA and JLA respectively)
Just a thought...
Sorry my former Comics Nexus colleague but I think the problem at hand isn't that Modern DC has become Marvel or that Modern DC has become Marvel. The problem at least to me is that both Marvel and DC seem perfectly content to churn out a toxic stew of continuity porn and shock tactics.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the soap opera analogy really applies to DC as for the last year of DC comic seems to be flooded with stories with characters acting in absolutely illogical fashion simply because the plot requires it to. Why does Mary Marvel go from being a pollyanna to over-the-top gleeful evil so damn quickly in Countdown? Because the plot requires her too. Bart Allen knows he'll die if he tries to save the city of Los Angeles alone and yet he doesn't try to contact the Justice League or the Teen Titans... why? It's the PLOT! Or why does Batgirl knowing what happened to Bludhaven trust Deathstroke in World War III? THE PLOT NEEDS HER TOO! Years of established characterization gets trashed simply as a means of getting the characters from point A. to point B.
Meanwhile over at Marvel Comics it seems that they took the "there's no continuity any more" complaints from the Jemas years to heart and spent the past two years making their major books anchored in as much reader unfriendly continuity as possible. House of M. and Decimation took their roots from something that happened in a John Byrne West Coast Avengers storyline unavailable in trade. Civil War was rooted in an idea from Byrne's Fantastic Four Run. (Also largely unavailable in trade.) Most recently one of the cliffhangers from Secret Invasion takes root from a 90s X-Men story, which also long out of trade!
Anyway I don't think your point about Marvel's female heroes as being tied to male heroes really applies. I honestly don't think that many readers remember Carol Danvers days as a supporting character in the pages of Captain Marvel, Jessica Drew was never really connected to Spider-Man (at least not the way Oracle or Huntress have been tied to Batman), and I know I'm going to get some angry responses, but I actually think Storm is more interesting a character in Black Panther than she was in X-Men.
A pretty interesting thought, too... makes me wonder why I've found DC more attractive lately as compared to Marvel.
ReplyDeleteI mean seriously, really... Storm as a sidekick? Ugh. >_<
Here via WFA!- just with a 'huh' reaction. Because I'm relatively new to comics (have been absorbing them like a sponge over the last few years), and I follow modern DC and yet prefer traditional Marvel. For - all those reasons.
ReplyDeleteStill, you mentioned Storm's status as sidekick wife, and I cringed at the thought of Green Arrow-Canary, my subscription to which I have yet to cancel.
Uh, that's all I have to say.
I don't think the soap opera analogy really applies to DC as for the last year of DC comic seems to be flooded with stories with characters acting in absolutely illogical fashion simply because the plot requires it to. Why does Mary Marvel go from being a pollyanna to over-the-top gleeful evil so damn quickly in Countdown? Because the plot requires her too. Bart Allen knows he'll die if he tries to save the city of Los Angeles alone and yet he doesn't try to contact the Justice League or the Teen Titans... why? It's the PLOT! Or why does Batgirl knowing what happened to Bludhaven trust Deathstroke in World War III? THE PLOT NEEDS HER TOO! Years of established characterization gets trashed simply as a means of getting the characters from point A. to point B.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying that DC hasn't published a lot of bad stories with a lot of bad characterization in the past year (*cough cough - Green Arrow/Black Canary wedding*) I am, however, saying that Marvel has been doing it more often and with greater enthusiasm. Between Gangsta-Doom, Peter Parker making a deal with the devil, Fascist Iron Man and... well, let's just say everything Mark Millar has written ever since going Exclusive, there's a lot more examples of Marvel taking major characters and bending the character to fit the story than at DC.
Meanwhile over at Marvel Comics it seems that they took the "there's no continuity any more" complaints from the Jemas years to heart and spent the past two years making their major books anchored in as much reader unfriendly continuity as possible. House of M. and Decimation took their roots from something that happened in a John Byrne West Coast Avengers storyline unavailable in trade. Civil War was rooted in an idea from Byrne's Fantastic Four Run. (Also largely unavailable in trade.) Most recently one of the cliffhangers from Secret Invasion takes root from a 90s X-Men story, which also long out of trade!
Are you sure that this is basing something off of a past story or it isn't just creative bankruptcy disguised as a tribute? The more I look at Bendis' work, the more convinced I am that he - much like Judd Winick - just looked for a website summarizing old comic stories, plugged in a few lines and then did whatever the hell he wanted to get Point A and Point B to tangent together.
Anyway I don't think your point about Marvel's female heroes as being tied to male heroes really applies. I honestly don't think that many readers remember Carol Danvers days as a supporting character in the pages of Captain Marvel, Jessica Drew was never really connected to Spider-Man (at least not the way Oracle or Huntress have been tied to Batman), and I know I'm going to get some angry responses, but I actually think Storm is more interesting a character in Black Panther than she was in X-Men.
Oh, I KNOW that Carol, Jessica and Jennifer are very far removed from Geneis, Peter and Bruce and have - for the most part - been so for a number of years. That doesn't change the fact that they were basically created to be part of the mythos of a male character, however flimsy the connection is. I just find it kind of ironic that for all the flack that DC gets about most of their female heroes being in the shadow of a male character...
... well, what female characters have solo books right now at Marvel?
I rest my case.
Well, Dwayne McDuffie wrote her as more of a partner and the queen she should be in Fantastic Four.
ReplyDeleteSadly, his run seems to have been swept under the rug in the wake of the rush to praise Millar/Hitch's "two issues and nothing has happened" run.
Ah yes. The exception that proves the rule.
ReplyDeleteI'll admit that it's not a perfect analogy. Mary Marvel's skirt kept creeping higher and higher through Countdown, for instance, which kinda kills my case for the female heroes being treated in a more respectful manner. And what they've done with Dinah in "Green Arrow/Black Canary" is nearly as bad as what they're doing with Ollie.
Bad enough that they rewrote history so that he was envious of Batman and trying to match him every step of his career - now they have Ollie being portrayed as an incompetent buffoon and Batman is showing up every other issue to "help".
Yeah. I'm only just getting into Green Arrow, but seriously, what the hell?
ReplyDeleteI have managed to tear myself away, now. The latest issue with the rubber alien suits (and naff treatment of my hometown) was the last straw.
Love the icon. :)
ReplyDeleteDo yourself a favor - you want to read some good Green Arrow stories? Track down Mike Grell's work on the first Green Arrow series (#1-80 + the Longbow Hunters mini-series) and Kevin Smith's Quiver and Sounds of Violence.
Oh I have Longbow Hunters - Massive Dinah fan and had to read the arc that 'fridged her - and a lot of the first series as well - it's the series between leaving Seattle and the marriage that I've missed. But thanks for the recs - I'll look up Kevin's Smiths line soon, I'm sure!
ReplyDelete*nods* Grell gets a lot of flack for depowering Dinah - but to his credit, he did present her well in the monthly Green Arrow series. Even then she was shown as being more competent than Ollie but that was more by way of her being more sensible and not Ollie being an idiot who couldn't see zippers on a rubber mask.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes - the Smith stuff is greatness. Meltzer would have been good except for the reality-defying twist that he ended Archer's Quest with. And then Judd Winick ignored all of that until editorial finally put their foot down five years later and required him to explain away Meltzer's continuity problems.
I didn't think he depowered her through the Longbow hunters - IIRC he depowered her through forgetting she had powers and then using the Longbow Hunters events to explain away when it was remembered. I may have got it wrong, though.
ReplyDeleteI like Ollie being hotheaded, impulsive and less sensible than Dinah. I despise his level of incompetancy right now. And yet Dinah's still his sidekick, and has somehow acquired computer knowledge.
Blegh.
Actually, Longbow Hunters came out before the regular Green Arrow series. I forget if it was originally intended to test the waters for a regular series or if the series came about because Longbow Hunters was so popular, but Grell's intent was always to do a more realistically-grounded superhero book with both Ollie AND Dinah, so the depowering WAS intentional. We know this because the Justice League book at that time was rewritten to acknowledge the change in Green Arrow and not the other way around.
ReplyDeleteI've only been scanning GA/BC so I had totally missed that Dinah - always a technophobe even before Dixon's Birds of Prey - is now running computer programs Batman designed. Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying Dinah couldn't have changed or that she wouldn't have picked up a few things after working with Babs for so long... but it never got acknowledged in the comis before... like, ever!
I did, however, point out that before GA became GA/BC, that most of Winick's scripts read like reworked Batman scripts - with Mia in place of Oracle and Ollie in place of Bruce.
Oh I knew the order in which they happened, I just thought it was referred back, and haven't read the appropriate Justice League books - thanks.
ReplyDeleteThere's picking stuff up and there's the active interest she seems to be taking now. That's what annoys me.
So I tell myself she's just pretending to know what she's saying. Really Babs is still feeding information into her earring. Yep.
I just comfort myself by looking at the sales numbers and noting that Winick has almost lost what little boost he had by the comic restarting at #1. Already lost 1/3 of the potential readers Issue #1 had. Another 5,000 reader drop and he'll be back to the doldrums of before.
ReplyDelete"Mary Marvel's skirt kept creeping higher and higher through Countdown. "
ReplyDeleteOf course her skirt gets higher and higher. Everybody knows that if a heroine turns into a villain, her clothes always reveal more skin and/or get tighter. How else would you know that she turned evil?
Maybe she could rip a baby's head off?
ReplyDeleteMs Marvel & She-Hulk, who aren't sidekicks.
ReplyDeleteSidekicks, no. Characters who are defined by a male heroic identity, yes.
ReplyDelete