Me Geek, You Geek

I agree.

I've been tired of Marvel's direction for several years now, but it really culminated for me during Dark Reign.

By its end, Dark Reign had saw me cut back on Marvel titles to only the bare essentials. I found mysef enjoying very few of the Marvel books I was bringing home each wednesday. On most books, the tone was discouraging and disheartening, and I didn't like the subliminal button-pushing I felt was going on.

Couple that with an unexplained one-dollar price-hike to $3.99 per issue on their highest-selling books, I decided that Marvel was beginning to resemble a company I did not feel comfortable about supporting financially.

(I won't even get into how angry I was with Amazing Spider-Man and the disrespect I saw Stephen Wacker and his writers treat such a great character with. Getting drunk and passing out?! Having unprotected sex in a one-night stand?! This certainly wasn't the Spider-Man I grew up idolizing. But that's another rant altogether...)

While I do look forward to the Heroic Age, I am skeptical.

I believe that fictional superheroes of great morality must also be handled by creators of good integrity. And unfortantely, I do not see that in Bendis. (Nor in Millar or Quesada either. Look at your above blog post, for example. Instead of issuing a professional apology, Quesada threw one of his employees under the bus in an obvious cop-out. Certainly not a man I would want to work for, nor one I would want handling the creative direction of heroic icons.)

Look at Bendis's latest issue of New Avengers. The cursing was on every page, with even Captain America blurting out "Son of a Bitch."

No big deal on the surface. But when one notices Bendis's increasing frequency of the cursing -- along with women being mauled, be-headed, and sexually idolized -- a reader must question where it's all headed to.

Are these things appropriate for the 616 heroes? All this in a "Rated A" Marvel book, which ostensibly means it's appropriate for ages 9 and up. I have no childen... but if I did, I would not want my 9-year-old son nor daughter believing the iconic Steve Rogers would say "bitch" in any context whatsover.

If nothing, simply because the Steve Rogers I grew up on would not say "bitch". And the Peter Parker I thought was awesome as a little kid never got drunk and a one-night stand he couldn't recall the next morning.

I'm no prude. I've done these things in my personal life, and I'm not always proud of that -- but I don't think our heroes should do them.

Also, I curse in my daily life, and I don't have any problem at all with cursing in the MAX books, or even in the Ultimate line of books. But I don't believe it has much place in the 616 books -- at least not to the degree Bendis has been doing it lately.

As I am excited to see Brightest Day coming over at DC, I'm even more happy that the Heroic Age is coming at Marvel. But I am not convinced Brian Michael Bendis is the man to give us the Heroic Age.

But we'll see, I suppose...

Wooza Liberty! That's not a comment! That's its own blog post!

Fantastic post analysis.

I would add, regarding your Spider-Man disappointment, that not only would Spider-Man NOT have decided to have a one night stand, he wouldn't even have been able to find someone to have one with. What happened to Peter being a nerd?

What really disappoints me as well about Joe, Bendis', Millar, etc. is that they continue to alienate future readers: the kids!

Comics have become more mainstream now than ever before. But anytime I pull up an interview on a website, in Wizard magazine (um...I mean Wizard pamphlet) or in a podcast, the cussing and adult only talk ensues.

What’s great about the mainstreaming of comic books and the ability to have more news about comics than ever before (with websites and podcasts) is that the younger audience can become one with the creators and get "behind the curtain" to see the craft that's going in to making comics.

But, they really can't. I would love to drive in my car with my daughter (who digs comics at the age of almost 8 years old) and listen to a Wordballoon podcast with Bendis about the creation of comics. But I can't. Cause he's dropping the F'bombs and talking like a juvenile (no...worse!) throughout the entire podcast.

It's absurd and disappointing.

So yeah, I agree.

We can only hope that our heroes become more iconic again.

PS: Is their anyway I can get your e-mail so I can drop you a line?

Agreed.

A lot of the new guys aren't what I would call professional in their interviews.

Bendis is probably the worst, but Millar, Ellis, and Quesada all talk like that in interviews and at Cons.

Remember Quesada yelling "Fuck Speedball!" at a Speedball fan during a panel about the upcoming Civil War a few years ago? Jeeez....

Again, I curse quite a bit in my personal life too. But I don't do it at work in front of customers because it's unprofessional and makes both me and my company look poorly.

Thinking back to the guys I grew up reading -- the old guard like Claremont, Wein, Wolfman, Byrne, Stern, etc... I honestly don't remember them speaking like that in public forums. I'm not saying saying these guys were perfect saints by any stretch. And I certainly don't remember every interview I've ever read of those guys, so if nostalgia is coloring my statement, feel free to tell me. :) But I think it's pretty obvious that the corporate culture of Marvel Comics has changed for the worse in the last few decades.

Also, I don't think most comic fans realize that there has indeed been a gradual downward moral slide in how our superheroes are being written. It's went largely unnoticed because it's been so very gradual over the past several years.

For example: recently I bought some nice copies of the original Stan Lee and John Romita Amazing Spider-Man run from the late 60's, and I picked up the entire Roger Stern and John Byrne Captain America run from the 80's.

The difference in what we're getting nowadays as opposed to those older issues is HUGE. The tone in those backissues was heroic, optimistic and life-affirming. There was zero cynicism. (I like you pointing out the "cynicism" in your above blog. That's an apt word for what modern superheroes have become.)

Those old backissues weren't edgy, dark, nor cynical. And to top it off, there was little to zero political propaganda and no agenda-pushing in them. At least none that I detected, anyway.

Again, that's a big diffeence from what Marvel's presenting these days. So yeah, I sincerely do hope the Heroic Age lives up to its name. But honestly -- I'd be more excited about an editorial regime change at Marvel. But that doesn't seem to be anytime soon, so...

It will be interesting to see how the Disney acquisition impacts their public appearances. I'm sure Disney isn't going to be keen on Quesada talking like he does.

And no, you aren't glossing over your youth and forgetting Byrne, Stan, etc, yelling "F*ck Speedball!". No way would that have happened in a public forum.

I dig edgy comics when they are just that...edgy. You can't call things edgy anymore when the majority of your line is "edgy". Do edgy for a while, and then move on.

I think it was Mark Millar who once said, "Can't we let Daredevil have one good day? Just one?" or something to that accord.

And it's true. They need to let Matt come up for air here, VERY soon....he's losing readership fast.

Hey Jon!

My opinion about the Disney buyout: Disney has a documented historical connection to the Pentagon going all the way back to the WWII days. Back then, the Pentagon approached Disney about producing films to help influence the American public's opinion towards declaring war on the Axis Powers.

With Disney pulling the strings now, I believe you can expect to see Marvel publishing even more subtle propaganda, like the Brubaker Cap story you've already blogged about.

Unlike the 40's however, the Pentagon is now pushing less jingoistic-themed propaganda. As the globalists and transnationalists have solidified their hold over the U.S.'s banking, corporate, and military institutions, their media outlets now push a propaganda of a different flavor: it's more of a globalistic/New World Order tone now. It eschews nationalism and condemns what the globalists dub "American protectionism."

Going back to that Cap story again: that's what "Two Americas" true subliminal thrust was all about. Brubaker was essentially demonizing true partiots, gun owners, and grass-roots movements (like the Tea Party) who want the U.S. to retain its sovereignity and uphold the Constitution. He was villainizing Americans who oppose foreign, off-shore, privately-owned banks financially raping middle-class citizens.

Of course, Brubaker painted all those terrible Americans as rural, low-class, uneducated redneck racists who hate Obama, right?

In that sense, "Two Americas" was in fact New World Order propaganda, rather than jingoistic in theme. They have to erode what made America strong in the past, its middle class, its sense of nationality, its industrial base, etc in order to do what they want. The old American values must be destroyed in order to set up the global system they're aiming for -- that was the propaganda gist of Brubaker's latest Cap story.

And admittedly, propaganda in comics isn't something new. It goes back to comics earliest days. In fact, we'd never have had the awesome Steve Rogers if it wasn't for war-time comics propaganda.

What scares me, though, is the massive increase I see it coming from Marvel nowadays, and the increasingly subtle and corrosive forms it takes.

(I actually just posted about this on CBR under The New Avengers Finale thread. Man, Bendis's trash is really driving me crazy anymore.)

And seeing Disney buy out Marvel, I can only assume the Quesada/Bendis/Brubaker trio will be hawking more of it than ever before.

But that's just my take on it.