ratcreature | Entries tagged with marvel: questions

It finally opened here this week, and it was fun to watch, though slightly confusing, because I'm not familiar at all with Marvel's cosmology and all the alien species running around there and their intergalactic grudges, so it was hard to put the events in any sort of context. Then again, the comics themselves probably don't make much sense in the first place.

( some more specific, and thus spoilery confusing things )

I know that Bucky Bear appears in that Marvel A-Babies vs. X-Babies crack (though I haven't read the comic), but is that the first and only "canon" (well some variety of official source anyway) with Bucky Barnes teddybear merchandise and fandom just really ran with it, as fandom does, or does it appear anywhere else?

That was a lot of fun.

( I do have a very spoilery question though )

As evident from my last couple of posts I seem to be drifting back into a frame of mind for regular comic reading again. For a long time (well in fandom cycles anyway), I didn't keep up with monthly comics. That was only in part because of the various, never-ending "event" messes, but also simply because my interest in things and my fannish mental space tend to be somewhat cyclic-- possibly governed by mysterious and opaque mechanisms, that I'm never quite able to predict myself. (Hence the phrasing "seem to be" above.)

Anyway, anticipating the eventual return of my interest, I continued to get several of my subscriptions and orders, mostly based on a mix of which characters I'm into in principle, which writers I frequently liked before, and at least in the case of DC, which issues seemed kind of central to their universe restructuring (I know it is weird, not to mention the path to bankruptcy to buy a bunch of comics for well over a year, or more like over two I guess, even though you are not even reading them, but I was certain that I eventually feel interested again, and from a collecting standpoint I like single issues just better than getting trades later on, besides the expenses stretch out this way when you buy a bit every week).

So now I have a large pile (well, actually it's some shortboxes) of comic backissues that is somewhat intimidating, and I'm not sure which order would be best to read, whether I should just plod on reading weekly issues consecutively in publishing order or read some arcs first, or something else.

Since I'm more involved with DC I (used to) follow more series there making catching up more complicated. Obviously even from just being on LJ with a partly comic fandom f-list I've gathered that DC canon in particular is somewhat, um...fraught? at the moment, and has been for a while, and I don't want to kill my reemerging interest through aggravation either, though I suspect what exactly is found to be aggravating and horrible is bound to differ from fan to fan to some extent at least, and I think I'm already spoiled for most (un)deaths and several other things that put people off, since I mind spoilers for comics less myself, especially considering my longish reading abscnce which made staying spoiler free and in fandom not feasible. And well, obviously some things you just have to get through to follow other parts, that are hopefully better.

Anyway, my main focus of my DC interests are the extended Batfamily, the "core" Justice League, anything with Dick Grayson (even when not connected to Batman stuff), Barbara Gordon and Roy Harper, the Flash (mainly Wally, but I like the others too), and to some extent Tim Drake. And well, I also really like Animal Man. I stopped reading somewhere during or maybe in the build-up of the War Games crossover in the Batverse books, and in the middle of that Identity Crisis mini series in the JLA. The comics that I continued to get through my "reading hiatus" and thus don't have to track down, are the Batverse books, the Identity Crisis and Infinity Crises mini series (including some of the "countdown to" and "aftermath" books, but not all, like, I got the one with Nightwing, the OMAC Project miniseries and Villains United and I think I bought the Donna Troy special, but not the Rann-Thanagar war thing or the Spectre stuff), the main JLA series and the Justice League of America relaunch of it, Flash, Green Arrow, Teen Titans, Outsiders, Superman/Batman, Checkmate, that new Atom series and 52.

Because I tend to really like Grant Morrison I also have all of the Seven Soldiers series. Well except for one issue missing from one of the series that I somehow didn't notice was absent in my comic pile that week, and couldn't find later on yet, so I'd probably need to find a scan of that one somewhere before reading, but I don't think it is part of the continuity anyway.

As far as Marvel goes, I mostly follow Daredevil and Spider-Man, and also get Astonishing X-Men, and since I'm caught up with DD, that mostly just leaves me with a decision whether to read these Civil War and Civil War: Front Line limited series I've gotten parallel to the Spider-Man and X-Men stuff or separately, but I didn't get all the tie-ins and such. Actually I think I may have bought some of the Avenger issues relating to Civil War (I had tried to get into the Avengers during that "Disassembled" thing, because I liked them in the JLA/Avengers x-over, but the Scarlet Witch plot annoyed me, so I didn't really get into the series). Still it shouldn't be as complicated as sorting out the best reading order for my DC backlog. I also have the Supreme Power and Squadron Supreme stuff and Next Wave series (though iirc I'm missing Next Wave #9 for some incomprehensible reason, that is while I'm fairly sure I had it ordered, by the time I bagged the accumulating pile of comics I found all issues except for #9, which is why I haven't read it yet.)

So, any advice for the paths of least ~~frustration~~ resistance to slowly tackle my considerable comic pile with a sound strategy? Or should I just go stoically by publication date to recreate the initial reading experience?

I haven't seen any new issues of newuniversal (written by Warren Ellis, art by Salvador Larroca) in the last couple of solicitations, which led me to believe that it may have been a miniseries rather than an ongoing one as I thought, but then I actually read the first six issues-- I had read the first issue when it came out, but it seemed very much a comic that is better read in larger chunks, so I waited-- and it turns out that it isn't, not even the end of a clear arc, #6 just stops with a "to be continued..." So does anyone know what's up with the series? Is it on hiatus? Cancelled?

It would kind of suck if the series stopped prematurely. While it isn't exactly an awesome comic, it's not awful either, and I'm quite enjoying it so far. The story isn't original (not even in the "new twist on old idea" way), which isn't surprising since I understand it is some kind of remake of a short-lived old Marvel alternate universe (that I had never heard about) or something like that. Basically it's just an "superpowers emerge because of mysterious event, what happens next?" setup, with some mythology stuff abut the nature of those superpowers and their trigger (the "White Event") thrown in, and the art isn't memorable either (though not awful or anything), but I'd still like to see the rest. It may have taken a bit, but after six issues I'm now actually somewhat interested in the characters and the plot.

On a somewhat random and ranty note: why is Marvel so fond of pasting "new" in their titles anyway? Like, there's "New Avengers", "New X-Men", "New Excalibur", "New Warriors"... far more than DC does. I find it annoying, and it makes collecting series a pain because you first have "Team Blah" then it changes to "New Team Blah" for a bit, then it either goes back to "Team Blah" directly or first to "Fabulous Team Blah" if they feel inspired before it reverts to "Team Blah" again, possibly with messed up numbers, and if you try to figure out in which order the story lines were published a while later, you need several hours of web research to untangle the mess. Not to mention that you risk getting the wrong comics when you try to get them via mail order, because you didn't realize that the website actually offered "The Fabulous New Team Blah" (say the Volume 2 incarnation of Team Blah) when you wanted that issue of "The New Fabulous Team Blah" (say the Volume 4 incarnation of the same). Does this actually help immediate sales? I mean these restarts are just as likely to give me an excuse to drop a series from my pull list and not add the new one if I'd been already following it, as to add it when I didn't, it really depends on the artists and writers, and well the inertia of having a a comic on my list and being completist about it goes actually a long way to stick with a series through a run by a team I dislike, whereas name changes give me an easy out. And like I said, retrospectively they get really confusing fast.