Dear John...er...Marvel
I hate to have to come right out and say it, my dear, but it's over. Finito. The end. Oh sure, we had some laughs over the years...too many for me to even count. You were my first love after all. DC was just too stodgy, too sweet and sunny. You...you were dangerous. You were a teenaged "bad boy" and therefore irresistable. You took your heroes and made them fight. You added giant vats of angst and emotion and soap opera, and I loved it.
I read X-men. Hell, I bought Giant-Sized X-Men off the spinner rack at the Drug store. You remember, back in the old days. And it was great. I liked Thor, and Avengers, and Wolverine and Spider-Man and Conan, and then X-Men started to multiply like dandylions, and I bought every single one of them...even the Liefeld ones, because I was HOOKED, baby!
I'm not even sure that I can pinpoint the exact moment when I realized that somehow the bloom was off of the rose. But somehow it just wasn't as satisfying, and I started to stray. Yes, I cheated. I slithered over to the DC corner of the Comic book store and quietly, surreptitiously, started reading. It started small of course, these sort of affairs always do. But Giffen and DeMatteis's Justice League made me laugh, and it had been a while since you made me laugh. And then I started to realize that heroes can actually like each other and well...BE heroes to the populace. I got tired of being hated and feared by everyone. And after Jean died AGAIN, it started to get old.
"Civil War" pretty much killed it however. I looked at you and realized that I didn't even KNOW you anymore. When did you get so mean? So vindictive and nasty? Not to mention incoherent. I just don't understand you any more. I got the latest issues of Wolverine and Wolverine: Origins...and I couldn't make heads or tails out them. And we've been together for SUCH a long time, and it's so hard to just let you go, but it has to be done.
Oh, I'll hang around a little tiny bit. Nextwave was delicious, and I almost decided it was enough...but it wasn't. The thrill is gone. I'll probably still pick up Ultimate Spider-Man, because it is still fun and witty. I hear that Captain America is supposed to be good. But I'm heading over to the bright and shiny part of the Comic Book aisle. Things like Green Lanterns and the Sinestro Corps, "52", Booster Gold, the Justice Society, Blue Beetle, "I Can't Believe It's Not The Justice League", Birds of Prey, Flash, Checkmate, old JLI issues...It's just so much more appealing. Yeah, there is death and destruction and violence and rape and brutish thuggery in the DC universe as well as yours...a little TOO much for my liking, but at least there is also a little bit of hope and humor as well.
So...it's over. I know you'll survive without me, you have all those people who like the "Heroes for Hire" cover afterall. But please pardon me if I don't want to hang around and watch you kill off Mary Jane, so that Joe Quesdada can write about Spider-Man downloading porn and having casual sex. If that is to my taste, I can go read Nightwing insead.
Love
Sallyp
posted by SallyP @ 8:14 AM
11 Comments:
Three words that would make Marvel good again: Wendell Elvis Vaughn.
Quasar, as built up by Mark Gruenwald, and as (usually) portrayed by other writers, was the guy who made me love Marvel. What's not to love? The quantum bands may have been a ripoff of Green Lantern rings, but the character himself was just so down-to-earth and believable. He was the best of both worlds: like the best Marvel characters he was fallible flesh and blood, but like the best DC characters he never found his courage or ideals wanting. And he used to hang out with Ben Grimm, just because.
People love Kyle Rayner and I understand why that would be, but really, Kyle is little more than a less-well-executed version of Wendell Elvis Vaughn. And Wendell seems to be dead at least for now ... which is a shame, he's the guy who could remind Marvel how to hero right.
I buy two to three Marvel titles every week when my DC books are being wrapped.
Shhh.
I have always been a bigger DC fan than a Marvel fan, never buying long runs, but trying out titles for a few issues at a time. Mostly the big stuff, "Age of Apocolypse" and "Onslaught" got me buying X-Men. I'd pick up an issue of a Spider-Man comic here and there.
In late 1997/early 1998 I was on-board for the "Heroes Reborn" titles, giving them up when I stopped collecting comics all together.
In 2001, I started collecting comics again, still more DC. But Marvel pulled me in with Grant Morrison on New X-Men and J. Michael Straczynski on Amazing Spider-Man.
When Grant left Marvel, so did I. ASM got boring and nothing else attracted my attention.
After hearing about what's been going on at Marvel and reading reviews, it seems that for the foreseeable future, I'll be saying "Make Mine DC."
Though Marvel wasn't my very first love (that goes to a Belgian girl - those American comics presented a language barrier, but Harvey and Archie befriended me and taught me English), she was the first girl I spent real money on. I hung out with DC too, but she just seemed, older y'know?
But we had to break up in '91 (what I call the Great Marvel Purge) when she started to pull all this variant cover stuff. Just not my style. By then, DC had gone post-Crisis and we were seeing eye to eye more and more. We still hung out.
And then she introduced me to her sister Vertigo and I lost my heart (and my virginity) to her.
Been a while though, and getting older, I don't have the same libido I used to. A lot of trades, only two monthlies (for fun), mostly Showcases and stuff that's recommended on the blogosphere, but that's it. More into the light hearted stuff, but my old flame is still feeding me Fables and DMZ trades...
This mean you're available, Sally?
*straightens tie, slicks back hair*
(ahem)
Hey, baby.
But there are some glimmers or hope and fun out there--just buried under much of the rest. Modok's Eleven, Iron Fist, Daredevil, Spider-Man Family, X-Men: First Class. It's not the big icons or big event books which are amusing or entertaining me now, and it's definitely fewer and further between. But there are jewels out there.
That said, I know what you're saying. As big a Marvel Fanbull as I am, I'm buying precious little from them anymore.
There ARE little snippets of good stuff here and there at Marvel of course. I'm just out of love with the major books that I collected for longer than I like to remember.
And DC does occasionally enrage me, but we always kiss and make up it seems.
Yes, Vertigo had a lovely come-on. Sandman, Preacher, Hellblazer...be still my heart.
Kristina, Nightwing is SUCH a himbo. Of course so is Roy.
Oh Soup, you're SUCH a sweet talker! (flutters eyelashes)
I used to be a huge fan of the X-men, but they're just no fun anymore. :-( I've always gravitated back to the DC heros, 'cause they've always seemed much more, well, heroic. When it comes down to it, at the end of the day, if my life is in danger and I'm in need of saving, I'd trust a DC hero over a Marvel hero (well, except for Spider-Man) in making sure I get out alive and relatively intact. The DC heroes always make me feel safer somehow.
With that in mind, I think the best thing to come out of Marvel in the last ten years has been the Great Lakes Avengers. They wouldn't make ANYONE feel safe, but they're also pretty darned entertaining. Squirrel Girl rules! ;-)
I forgot GLA! Silly me. I admit that Squirrel Girl is a fabulous character. And yet, oddly she seems to be more of a DC Character than a Marvel one. I'm just waiting for them to give her a rape in her back-story, and some present angst so that she can become DARK SQUIRREL!
I'm more of a Marvel fan, and I don't want to be a Marvel apologist, but I still feel more burned by DC's ongoing Infinite Crisis nonsense, than by Civil War. That's not to say I enjoyed Civil War, at all, but more good stuff has come out of it than Crisis.
But I say that, and I'm not buying the regular Avengers, Fantastic Four, or Spider-Man books at all right now. Should I be dismayed that I like the Marvel Adventures--books supposedly for kids--better than the regular Marvel U. versions?
I'm a relatively recent DC fan, but at this point my comic purchases are roughly 50/50 Marvel and DC. (If I had to choose one or the other, well, first I'd cry, but then I'd have to go with Marvel--too much history there.) I never was an across-the-board Marvelite, though--I never read Spider-Man, Thor, the Hulk, Dr. Strange, any number of other things. I'm equally selective in what I pick up from the DC universe.
Marvel-wise, I don't read any of the X-books, and haven't since I picked up the comic habit again a few years back. I don't miss them either, and they were among my favorites as a teenager so it's kind of sad.
So, good Marvel? Well, Captain America comes to mind--it's held the top spot on my read-it-first list ever since I started getting it, and that's saying something. I've enjoyed the Irredeemable Ant-Man series that's about to be canceled, but I realize it's not to everyone's taste. I'm definitely looking forward to some of Marvel's upcoming projects (The Twelve for sure, and potentially Avengers/Invaders).
FWIW my favorite DC stuff is either Gail Simone's work or else it's something in the Green Lantern arena.
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