I'm enjoying New Mutants and Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers right now. I wish I had been collecting The Incredible Herc, Daredevil and Captain America over the last bunch of months. I enjoyed Iron Fist while Fraction was writing it. Whedon's Astonishing X-Men run was pretty great.

I hesitate to get anything with a "BIG SUMMER CROSSOVER TIE-IN" banner. The last one of those I did was Young Avengers - Dark Reign, or Dark Young Avengers, or whatever. It was not good. And Secret Invasion had a lot of potential, but wasted it. Civil War started poorly and ended worse. It's a shame, because I frequently like the creators and the characters involved, but inevitably find myself wishing they hadn't been.

--wyld

Nah, he'd try to get rights to each and everyone so he could ruin them with pointless retcons, because he has no respect for anybody who ever wrote about them.

To add to the gripe about this one...I remember reading an interview with Joe Q that they one of the main reasons they decided to effectively "re-start" Spider-man was because that they had lost most of the supporting cast and wanted to get back to that (and the struggles of being single) for the readers so they could once again "identify" with Spidey. I cry BS on that...if readers wanted THAT era of Spider-man they can read Ultimate.

Personally I think part of it was because Marvel had sooooooo screwed up Spidey over the years that they had to do something...ANYTHING to try to "re-set" him.

I mean let's look at Spidey since the "Clone" era...(I'm sure I'll be missing something significant, but here's what I remember most)...

The clone era comes...it's horrible...and to get themselves out of it they bring Norman Osborn back to life (???????? THAT'S the best solution? - and what is UP with Marvel in that EVERYONE flippin' rengerates! - but I digress)...and Osborn claims to have been manipulating everything for years to get revenge/drive Spidey insane...the only thing that was worthwhile in that whole thing was the death of the clone (maybe - it's Marvel).

Then we have the Spider-totem junk...because Peter now being a mystical spider totem is TOTALLY keeping in line with the core concept of Spider-man being the "everyday guy" with superpowers.

Then we have the Gwen Stacy affair with Osborn - I can't even begin to comment on how bad this was without vomiting profusely.

I know there's more...but I think Marvel HAD to have Spidey to sell out to the Mephisto just to get them out of the hole they wrote themselves into, they just dug deeper in the hole 'till they got to Hell.

Personally I think that Spidey needs to do about a dozen episodes of Jerry Springer.

All of this demonstrates how much I hate that Marvel is a LOT more hype than quality storytelling anymore...it stinks 'cause Marvel has such great characters.

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I wonder what Jim Steranko thinks about this Hammer BS.

Would agree with that particular assessment: when people got lazy about creating original powers, the X-men's new characters got less interesting.

That's why I'll never harp on Maggott. At least they were trying!

I love your post, but I don't think DC is doing that much better. Let me rephrase that..I don't think they are as bad as Marvel is, but I think they are going down hill as well, but not as fast.

Final Crisis, IMO, was the worst comic I ever read. The Justice League has really gotten bad (I know there were issues with the writer and everything.) The Titans and the Teen Titans are just as bad. The Teen Titans are in a consistant pattern of a membership drive. I've been avoiding the Batman books simply because I'm so tired of the hero-dies-replaced-comes-back gimmick. Sure GL is good and Marvel has a few titles as well but the majority of the comics being put out these days just stink.

Yes god forbid that a title not look like every other title out there.

Nah there are waaaaay worse than FC. See: Ultimates 3 for example. FC rated a very solid meh from me.

Final Crisis, so true.

Joe Q. and Bendis.

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DC has had its shares of turkeys, let's not forget: Death of the New Gods, Final Crisis, the short-lived Flash series with Bart Allen as the Scarlet Speedster, etc.

That having been said, Marvel does seem to have a lot more turkeys these days...

Bucky-Cap isn't psycho! I actually like him as Cap...and I HATED what they did to Cap.

Actually, it seems the problem WAS editorial direction more than the writer, who was very recently canned for, apparently, sharing too much online with readers about the backstage going-ons that plagued his JLA run.

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