@AfroSamurai:
Just to defend the Marvel haters a little, Marvel has been exceptionally awful in the recent year. And seeing something as beloved as Marvel get completely neutered of it's action in favour of terrible storytelling where every villain is white, male, and privileged, while bevery single female character seems to be a stereotype of a left wing activist: twitter obsessed, rallying against racism and social injustice on the internet, and only occassionally doing anything 'heroic' to change things. Not to mention that every story seems to have gone from 'comic book hero' story to 'slice of life about first world problems with an occassional 3rd world issue thrown in to show how evil America and the wealthy are while not actually presenting any threat for the heroes to fight'. The company's basically been hijacked into being purely political commentary. X-men used to do that, but at least it didn't shove the issues down your throat while ignoring basic comic book writing, there was still an element of fighting and heroism.
[Citation Needed]
No seriously, I'm not entirely being facetious here. Give examples of what you're talking about so I know what you're talking about. I'm not aware of any of this.
From what I've seen, Thor, Wolverine, and Ms. Marvel have all been great and well received in their current iterations, so I'm not really sure what you're talking about.
@AfroSamurai:
Compare to DC, which has knocked it out the park since rebirth, staying apolitical and focusing on comic book villains and stories. Marvel's writing has gone down the drain, and it's very easy to see how readers might turn on female writers and editors whom are perceived to be pushing a strong political agenda down their reader's throats, while completely ignoring the formula that kept Marvel going till now.
Ok, no.
comics have ALWAYS been political. This stuff doesn't exist in a vaccum.
Hiding for length.
[hide]when Captain America #1 was first published, we had not yet entered WWII. That was the one that featured Cap punching Hitler? That was a HUGE political statement. There WERE Nazi sympathizers in the country, but they weren't the biggest opposition. By and large people in America were still weary after WWI and didn't want to enter into another War. Not yet knowing the extent of how horrible Hitler was helped make a lot of the country opposed. Having Cap punch Hitler was a HUGE political statement that Joe Simon and Jack Kirby got death threats for.
Plus, Watchmen, one of the most acclaimed comics of all time is a huge commentary on the Cold war.
So the concept of stories needing to be "Apolitical" to be good is a load.
Also, Marvel Is keeping to the formula that kept them going until now. It's a well noted fact that back in the Silver Age, when Stan Lee was creating new characters at Marvel, he mad a concious effort to make the characters flawed and relatable. He knew a secret to success was making characters people can relate to. So the slice of life stuff you say is bad and un-Marvel… Isn't...
The country is more diverse today than it was in the 60s when it was created, so naturally, more diverse characters and situations are to keep to this creedo but in a modern context.
Diversity, Aka "Politics" isn't what's hurting Marvel... I do know what is however.
We just about at 10 years since Civil War ended, so let's recap every major Marvel event since. We're talking Line-Wide Events here, so if it only affected a certain book or character(s), we ignore it. So no Messiah CompleX or Spider-Island. It has to span the ENTIRE Marvel U:
2006-2007: Civil War
2007: World War Hulk
2008: Secret Invasion
2010: Siege
2011: Fear Itself
2012: Avengers Vs. X-Men
2013: Age of Ultron
2014: Original Sin
2014: AXIS
2015-2016: Secret Wars
2016: Civil War II
2017: Monsters Unleashed
2017: Secret Empire
Now, since you hold DC up as the bastion of perfect storytelling, let's look at DC in the same timeframe. We'll pick Infinite Crisis as our starting point:
2005: Infinite Crisis
2006: One Year Later/52
2008: Final Crisis
2009: Blackest Night
2011: Flashpoint
2013-2014: Forever Evil
2015: Convergence
2017: The Button
I started the DC list one year earlier, and it has only EIGHT major universe-wide events in that timeframe. I also think I was being fair including One Year Later/52 as an event since really, it was just the aftermath of Infinite Crisis.
Marvel: 13. It starts out a t a reasonable pace that isn't too different from DCs, but then gets to be bad. DC takes whole years off of doing any major events, 2007 had nothing of note as did 2010, 2014, and 2016. Marvel? With the exception of 2009, it's Yearly, and often, it doubles up with events meshing into each other. Civil War lead into World war Hulk which lead into secret invasion which lead into Siege. Original Sin lead into Axis which lead into Secret Wars, and now we have Civil War II which leads into Secret Empire DESPITE another universe-wide event happening in the middle of them. Hell, sometime with Marvel, they ship the final issues of their huge crossover way late, so that the AFTERMATH issues hit store shelves BEFORE the ending. I'm looking at you Secret Wars.
I also didn't include relaunches or linewide rebrands. "All-New, All-Different Marvel", "Marvel NOW", "The New 52" and "Rebirth" aren't events because you don't have to read half of the company's books in their line in order to follow them. in both DCs cases, there is a single major event "causing" or surrounding them (Flashpoint and The Button) but then you can just read the books without needing to bother with it.
the problem is that Marvel keeps mandating these big events, meaning creative teams have their hands tied. They can't tell good or interesting stories if they have to hold back their creativity to make sure whatever story they're trying to tell with the characters doesn't hinder the next big event that's about to happen.
The few times in Marvel where a creative team have been able to handle it because their character wasn't integral to the event like Thor, Wolverine, and Ms. Marvel are the ones that shine, while all the ones that have to be beholden to the events are suffering.
It's Event Fatigue. Plain and simple. This is backed up by actually asking Comic Book store owners.
The part I find funniest about that is that the common narrative I like to see from the people crying about Diversity is "They are pandering to SJWs who don't even buy the comics!" but according to most comic show owners, the people complaining ABOUT the Diversity are the ones going into the stores to talk and not actually bying anything lol.
Anyway, this all makes perfect sense too when you look over at DC.
The New 52 wasn't bad because "It's different" it was bad for much the same reason. DC had really bad editorial interference going on for a good chunk of the New 52. They weren't being told to do a neverending chain of event comics, but they were being told very strictly what they can and can't do. Which caused some very notable issues where Creative teams quit in protest.
What were some of the critically acclaimed stories in the New 52? Batman, First 20 Issues of Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Aquaman.
Batman and Green Lantern had good sales before the New52, so their creatives teams were allowed to just keep doing what they were doing without having to worry too much about the Reboot. Hell, New52 Green Lantern picks up right where it left off before. Like, you're in the middle of a story where they are cleaning up after a war and Sinestro has a GL ring again for some reason. For something that's supposed to be a "Reboot" with new jumping on points for new readers, it really wasn't that lol.
Batman was more of a clean jumping on point, you weren't smack in the middle of another story, but his history was allowed to be mostly intact from before the New 52, just squeezed into a 5 year timespan, and the writer was allowed to do basically whatever he wanted.
Aquaman and wonder woman were full-on rebooted but they were written by Geoff Johns and Brian Azarello respectively, who are considered big hotshot writers at DC so they were given more creative freedom.
Most other stories however? Editorial Mandates across the board.
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TL;DR: Marvel's issue is Event Fatigue, not "SJWs".
@AfroSamurai:
Does that justify any of the horrible diatribe that is being sent to the milkshake girls for apparently the sin of not having a male in the room? No. Of course not. It's horrible and shouldn't be condoned.
But it's not like it's 'prowling the internet for any excuse to lash out' either.
They… kinda are. The Milkshake thing has absolutely positively NOTHING to do with any of their supposed "Issues" with Marvel.
They just saw Women working at Marvel and felt that alone made this picture relevant to their grievances. The fact that they were women who worked at Marvel instantly meant "SJWs".
That's like me looking at someone who is slightly overweight and has a beard and a comic book shirt and assuming "Oh, that guy must be one of those asshole Broflakes who attack women for no reason".
@AfroSamurai:
These people are angry because of a perceived attack on their values, on what they hold dear, on their childhood heroes and stories. Sure, their response goes overboard… but it's not like there's no 'reason' for it at all.
Ok, seriously. If the politics were still there, just leaned more conservatively, I guarantee you the people complaining about "Politics in my comics" right now wouldn't be. Like, if someone wrote Captain America saying "Adam and Eve, Not Adam and Steve" a lot of the "Get politics out of my comics!" crowd would defend it. I'm positive of this.
It isn't that Politics are in comics, it's that the writers and creative folks behind it don't align with the people complaining.
@AfroSamurai:
But can comics with no action and bad characters not bomb?
Watchmen.
Think about it, Watchmen has very little action. Zack Snyder had to add action to the movie version.
Hell, the climax has basically none. It's just…
! Adrian talking because they can't stop him at that point since he "Did it 35 minutes ago"
! That's why Night Owl had that part where he runs up and beats him and then makes a moral statement about the ending. Because the story was all political about the Cold War and philosophical and less actiony and they needed a more actiony climax.
Watchmen is regarded as one of the great classics of comics.
@Kaiolino:
"Back in my day, they didn't take potshots at the respected office of the presidency. "
[qimg]https://geekandprosper.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Geek-And-Prosper-Business-Foundations-Humility-2.png[/qimg]
There was a Captain America story where he became disillusioned with the US because of Nixon and became "NOMAD: The Man Without a Country!"