Captain America: Steve Rodgers --he's an agent of Hydra in new Marvel comic

Not all comics went to crap but to each their own I guess.

 

Thought captions missing as well.
Style is one thing, but makes the characters devoid of soul.

 

I find it hysterical that the company that is leading the Independent surge is Image Comics. I mean this is the company that literally broke the camels back back in the 90's and now they are literally re-inventing the wheel so to speak with the comic industry.

 

Never heard of Image until now but that seems interesting.

 

Image is where all the "Hot" young artists from Marvel wanted to branch out and create their own company...problem is they didn't have enough talented writers to go along with some of the artists. You may have heard of comic books like Spawn, Savage Dragon, and Wild Cats. Let's just say that the only one left from Image that is still somewhat viable within Image is the leader Todd McFarlane. He was also the same guy that bought Mark McGuires home run ball that broke Marris' Record for more than $1 Million.

 

I've heard of Spawn but nothing more. I'll do some info on 'em. I would also like to say that other than indie, I've been looking for good foreign comics as well.

 

I hear you. It's really hard to keep track of with so many different writers, storylines and universes.

 

So the immense popularity of the movies based on these characters isn't getting more people to read comics?

 

Not to my knowledge, no. I think the last time a movie really had a significant effect on comic sales was Batman in 1988. The problem now is that comics generally are no longer available in places where new readers might find them. If you go to a comic book store, you've already made a decision to buy a comic, most likely. There no longer is any mechanism for generating interest in people who haven't yet made that decision. And I suspect the content doesn't help, because Marvel and DC don't currently make much effort to make their material accessible or attractive to new readers. Today's market is all about fighting for market share among the diminishing base of existing readers, and the books are written with that in mind. Hence we get stories like this new Captain America one.

 

On the rare occasion that I go to a comic store, there still seem to be hundreds of titles being published, so presumably someone is buying them. Although, not me!

 

I agree that death has lost much of its sting in comic books, although the undoing of death goes back quite a long way. At the end of The Joker's first appear he died, but they did a last-minute change to show that he was still alive.

A few years ago DC tried to address the issue of death in The Blackest Night Green Lantern event which stated that the reason so many return from the dead is that the being who is the guardian between life and death stopped them from going to their final reward. At the end of the story they tried to make it where once you die, you stay dead. However, with all of the retcons and universe-altering events so many characters still come back from the dead.

One of the things I liked about Legion Of Super-Heroes (LSH) is that in that comic dead characters stay dead (in a story featuring The Adult Legion showed at least six legionnaires who had died, including some members who had not been introduced). It wasn't until the reboot of the LSH that they started to bring back some of the dead heroes.

In addition to killing characters, other things that the comic book companies have done to boost sales are:

• Multiple covers: Put four different covers on the same comic and many will buy all four.
• Number 1 issues: Number 1 issues used to be rare, but now we inundated with number 1 issues. After the Flashpoint event, DC Comics cancelled all of their series and started they again with a number 1 issue, and now with DC Universe Rebirth we are going to get a bunch of new number issues once again. Likewise Marvel Comics did something similar with their Heroes Reborn events, cancelling long running series and starting them again with new number 1 issues (although I've heard that they eventually restored the original numbering). Now a number 1 comic is nothing special, but a number 423 is special since there are so few of them.
• Massive company-wide events that drive people to purchase comics they normally would not have. Although it wasn't known at the time, Crisis On Infinite Earths originally was a much smaller event but became larger when more creative teams chose to participate (a reason the major heroes didn't make an appearance until later in the series, and one issue contained a large number of setups for other comics.

My understanding is that the term "Graphic Novel" is applied to books which collect a group of comics, usually based on something they have in common. Examples:

• The Art of Walt Simonson: A collection of DC Comic stories that featured the artwork of Walt Simonson (who later worked on Thor for Marvel Comics), including Metal Men #45 - #49 (the reason purchased the collection.
• Identity Crisis: Collected the entire Identity Crisis series, including background information provided by the creative team.
• Green Lantern: Rebirth: Collected the entire series, including background information provided by the creative team and a preliminary script for the series which included scenes not included in the actual story (including Batman being infected by Parallax).

 

I think the books you've mentioned, Identity Crisis & Blackest Night are what are commonly called TPB's (trade paperbacks) where a series of monthly comics are collected in one volume. Whereas, a graphic novel would be a stand alone such as the Death Of Captain Marvel or more recently the Earth One stories featuring Superman and Batman. But I may be wrong! Miller's original Dark Knight, although only 4 issues long was released over a period of months so could be considered a 'standard' comic, but it's considered the grandaddy of all graphic novels! Comic books, graphic novels, TPB's, they're always gonna be illustrated stories of guys in capes and tights!

 

And Miller's "Ronin" before that was heralded as a "graphic novel" if I'm not mistaken. . . .

 

Bad move. It's the same as Batman admitting that it was actually he who killed his parents due to wanting his inheritance faster and paid some criminals to take the heat... *sigh

 

That's an entirely different thing, though. The Joker's first appearance established the trope of a villain appearing to die, but with uncertainty (because a body was never found), follwed by a later revelation they survived. That's different than someone being unambiguously killed off and then resurrected. Prior to the 80s, deaths of superheroes (or even supporting characters) were used very sparingly, and as a result the stories in which they occurred were often genuinely shocking and moving. The 80s is where the wheels of restraint regarding death fell off the wagon. The fan market was beginning to dominate the readership, and the publishers noticed that fans would purchase large amounts of "death issues" in the misguided and idiotic belief that they would become more valuable than average issues. That led to things like Crisis on Infinite Earths, a muddled piece of fan-fiction filled with gratuitous deaths, designed specifically to sell to the fan market. The success of that ensured it would be imitated, and in fact that series has kind of set the template for how comics tell stories these days. Once death had become overused and commonplace, it was only a matter of time before they started resurrecting characters. Now it's gotten to the point where deaths and resurrections are huge cliches, and stories that feature them are pretty well meaningless, with zero emotional weight. Yet for some reason, they still sell. What fools these fanboys be.

 

Death was serious back in the day! I just looked this up - Superman #149 - The Death Of Superman - This was an 'imaginary' tale released in '61, the comic cost a dime. Man, I was 8 yrs old and I clearly remember crying when I read this! DC made history in a number of ways when they decided to kill off Jason Todd, the 2nd Robin. They actually had a phone number and asked the readers to vote, thumbs up or thumbs down, and thumbs down it was! At the time, NOBODY was thinking he'd be brought back, that just wasn't done in those days. It seems like such a crazy idea now, asking the readers what direction a story should take, They'd do themselves a favor if they did this now!

 

Guys, let's at least wait for the second issue to come out before we jump to any conclusions. Remember, this is all happening in the aftermath of the Standoff event, in which a fragment of a freakin' Cosmic Cube was being used to rewrite reality. There is absolutely zero chance that Marvel is going to allow Nick Spencer to retcon Steve Rogers into being a long-term sleeper Hydra agent. There's another story going on here, but, this being comics, we'll have to wait and see what it is.

 

Marvel continues with the cheap gimmicks to get publicity. Last week I read about the new "Iron Man"...a teenaged African American girl. This week I see they killed The Hulk, apparently. You and I both know these "events" will be temporary and this is all just a bunch of hooplah over nothing. If you need me I'll be reading my bronze age trade paperbacks and shaking my fist at a cloud.

 

Captain America now is a woman(along with Thor). Stupid!

 

If only they could, you know, create exciting NEW characters to compliment the old ones. But that would require real effort and imagination. Let's just slap someone new into an old costume to kick up some dust for a few months. The hype will generate a small spike in sales. Just reboot the Marvel Universe and restart every series at issue 1 every six months. It would take two dozen Crisis' on Infinite Earths to sort this hot mess out.

Aww, what do I care? If this noise is what people want to read more power to them. I can collect trades of back issues from the 70's for the rest of my life and never run out of new things to read. Master of Kung Fu! Excelsior!

 

WTF? Is this real? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

 

no, Batman is just an analogy. As for Cap - we can breathe in and out, apparently those were just some fake memories implanted in his mind or smth.

 

Aww, what do I care? If this noise is what people want to read more power to them. I can collect trades of back issues from the 70's for the rest of my life and never run out of new things to read. Master of Kung Fu! Excelsior![/QUOTE]

This.

 

I think a problem with trying to come up with new characters is that it is difficult to come up with a new character that isn't too close to an existing character. The last somewhat-original character I can think of is Firestorm (much of the originality had to do with the nature of the character, two characters who fuse into one but one of the persons is unaware that they are part of Firestorm).

Another factor is the legal issues such as needing legal approval before a character can be used. As an example, in Legion Of Super-Heroes they were going to introduce a new character (I think it was Dawnstar) but it took so long to get legal approval to use the character that the team that created the character didn't get the opportunity to use the character in the comic.

This could be a reason that it is easier to just put a new person in the costume. Some factors in whether it will succeed:

• Does it seem forced?: When Barry Allen died in Crisis On Infinite Earths and Wally West became The Flash, it didn't seem forced. Wally had been Kid Flash for decades (in our real time) and his becoming The Flash seemed like a logical move and his reason for becoming The Flash (to honor Barry) made sense. Better, even though Wally put on the costume it was a long time before he truly became The Flash. He had to prove himself worthy of the name and it took him years (in our real time). It wasn't like they just put took new person we've never seen before and put him in the costume.
  
• Is the person in the costume a core part of the character?: With some characters like Superman and Batman, the person in the costume is the character as much as the costume they wear. Clark Kent IS Superman and Bruce Wayne IS Batman. But other characters can take on the mantel of the character. As an example, although Green Lantern is usually associated with Hal Jordan there have been many other individuals who have been Green Lanterns (Kyle Rayner, Guy Gardner, John Stewart, Jessica Cruz, Simon Baz, Jennie-Lynn Hayden) on Earth (plus roughly 7,200 Green Lanterns hailing from other planets).

 

The following is spoilered for those who have not read Hush:

Spoiler

In Hush Thomas Elliot had that motivation for killing his parents and hated Thomas Wayne not because he couldn't save Elliot's father but because he did save Thomas Elliot's mother, delaying him from getting his inheritance. In a similar manner, Lex Luthor had his parents killed so that he could collect on an insurance policy that just happened to have been recently taken out on them.