Marvel Comics blabbery

otm about Al Ewing, Loki and Mighty Avengers are pretty much awesome every time

I was a voracious floppy hog (yet another out of context gift) until about three years ago when I stopped cold turkey. I'm slowly filling in gaps now but I mostly don't know anything that's happened from Fear Itself to present day.

dan/lunch: i quit buying floppies about five years ago when i bought my ninth bookshelf solely for comics... do you bag/board/box? Why do you guys still buy physical capes and tights books? they take about two minutes to read and a year to form a complete storyline that, nine times out of ten, is worth nowhere near that amount of effort and collected editions are cheaper and more manageable. What's the appeal for you?

I box my stuff out of necessity but I'm generally not precious enough about it to bag it (lotsa beat up comics). Back when I did buy floppies regularly, it was honestly in large part because of the addictive ritual of going to the shop every Wednesday. But also because it was easier to keep on top of the stuff I read than buying it after the fact would've been (especially given Marvel's horrendous reprint policy). Nowadays, I generally buy older stuff in trades, with the exception of anything crossover-y (I can't stand jumping all over the place within a trade/between multiple trades when I'm trying to read what's ostensibly a single story).

Also, while I find good value in digital (it's lovely to have hundreds of comics at the ready when I'm on the train), I vastly prefer to read physical copies of comics/books/etc. E-readers were much more favorable to my ADD when they were single-purpose devices.

The new Bucky Barnes: Winter Soldier is pure ilx-fodder. Trippy water-color imagery that takes place on the planets Syro, Exai and Mer-z-bow and involves aliens Ventolin and Rossz Csillag. The story, though, is a bit meh, and most of it is imcomprehensible. But I can't help but think it's cool that Marvel publishes this kind of thing. Hope it succeeds.

i do miss the ritual of comic book stores. sometimes i'll walk into one and kill an hour walking up and down the aisles but i generally leave with either a graphic novel i've long wanted or nothing.
ipad comic reading does just fine for me honestly; any issues i have with lack of haptics pales in comparison to portability, accessibility and space issues.

I have longboxes in basement storage and I like having physical, tangible objects

i'd like having basement storage!

Yeah, I wish I had more storage space. We have a lockup in the storage room of our building which doesn't have space for much but even so I'm sure it's been a relationship saver.

by the same token though, there's something to be said for being able to find anything you own in under ten minutes because it's on a shelf in front of you.
for me, boxes ultimately made it easy for me to lose or forget ownership or have any reason to curb my buying habits. Once I dumped about eight long boxes and bookshelved everything that i wanted to keep, I found i got a lot more choosy about where i wanted to buy... and it was often less about disposable income and more about what I could justify wanting to keep
that said, I now have a very specific sort of library that multiple moves over the past five years has left spread out all over the place and no close and nearby comic buddies to share it with. this is why people have children, isn't it?

I, uh, have a parrot and an eyepatch for current superhero stuff. And four longboxes, mostly 60s/70s Marvels and 80s indie floppies.

that said, I now have a very specific sort of library that multiple moves over the past five years has left spread out all over the place and no close and nearby comic buddies to share it with. this is why people have children, isn't it?

Feeling you. I also still have some stuff in a storage unit and in a shed at my mom's house. The thought of it all being in one place vividly illustrates the need for some hardcore paring down (or, perhaps, the selling of furniture). And, yeah, except for a few choice things my girlfriend's interested in, no one reads this shit but me, although I'd happily share the wealth.

children are the worst man

I generally haven't bought floppies in years - not worth the time/space/effort - and with rare exceptions all I buy now are trades or graphic novels. I still have like 1 1/2 longboxes full of stuff I bought when I was younger and don't want to part with.

now, my daughter otoh - I buy her floppies of stuff she wants pretty regularly, maybe a couple a month. soon she will need a longbox of her own lol

a father's proudest moment

reading comics w kids is awesome I highly recommend it btw

right now all her comics are jammed into the coffee table

I buy floppies occasionally but half of them have coffee stains on them and once I am done with them I throw them in the recycling bin

I only buy my kid trades. We don't really have the room for individual issues. Actually, at the moment, about two years into our mutual comic store trips period, we're even pushing our limit on trades. I'll have to rearrange the bookshelves soon.

I only buy trades/GNs now in physical form. Ran out of space for floppies years ago, and have found that the art genuinely seems to look better on an ipad's backlit screen.

Really looking forward to my daughter being old enough for comics. Got some Moomin and other stuff already for when she can read.

Straight scans of actual 60s and 70s marvel floppies look SO GOOD on a lit hd tablet screen.

Ah - I need directing to some better ones then! I had to delete my Gerber Defenders scans, they were kind of unreadable.

there are definitely bad scans out there. most of the ones I've gotten from torrents have been pretty careful-looking. Haven't read my old defenders files yet-- I was most of the way through the gerber run in Marvel Essentials but I'm gonna start it over in color cbz.

for whatever reason, black and white comics don't seem right on a screen for me, even a really nice screen...

Our Marvel All-Ages series are now changing names, but the stories remain the same! Marvel Universe Ultimate Spider-Man is now known as Marvel Universe Ultimate Spider-Man Web Warriors. That's not all! Marvel Universe Avengers Assemble will now be called Marvel Universe Avengers Assemble Season 2.

Marvel Universe Ultimate Spider-Man Beach Boys BBQ Blowout Bash Blast

in other news, squirrel girl

heh Ryan North gettin' work!

Our Marvel All-Ages series are now changing names, but the stories remain the same! Marvel Universe Ultimate Spider-Man is now known as Marvel Universe Ultimate Spider-Man Web Warriors. That's not all! Marvel Universe Avengers Assemble will now be called Marvel Universe Avengers Assemble Season 2.

what the everloving fuck with these guys
― the other song about butts in the top 5 (forksclovetofu), Monday, October 6, 2014 1:36 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm so glad I got out of comics, this is insanity atop insanity

TBF, these are just marginal, 'based on the animated series!' comics, and the stupid titles are probably just edicts from some low-level Disney marketing exec. Not really reflective of the main line.

yeah, sorry tbf those are actually comix made for kids.
but the constant rebooting!

the titling of comics for kids should be WAY LESS confusing than for 40-yo babymen

like in the mid-00s the all-ages Marvel books were all "something Adventures" and collected in $5 digests, not full-size TPBs - easy branding

I'm presuming they're trying to match the cartoon titles exactly

it's actually kind of a savvy (though also obnoxious) move to title a second year of books "season 2" to match the TV series
web warriors is a good idea considering there's going to be a separate canon Miles Morales series that will follow Axis (if i understand correctly)

So is Axis going to be really bad or what?

Kinda old at this point but I don't remember seeing this piece on Ike Perlmutter posted anywhere around these parts. Pretty eye-opening. Among the alleged revelations: in order to punish the studios who are thwarting Marvel's desire to have all of their properties under one cinematic roof, there will be no new characters in the X-books and FF is being cancelled outright.

Interesting, not aware of that guy. I didn't see anything about hobbling the X-Books and FF though, which sounds a little farfetched

That is more recent allegations. Can't remember who said there is a mandate not to create new x-characters, but it was someone with inside information. And it really seems as if FF will be canceled next year.

Well, I imagine that sales of the FF comic are pretty marginal, and probably have been for years (it's sort've the same situation as with Superman - a foundational comic that doesn't actually sell that well.) But if only to protect the copyright, I'm sure the characters will continue to appear in Marvel Universe Comics, even if not in their own title.

Oh, that stuff might've been in the io9 article I read last night that linked to the Perlmutter article. Sorry 'bout that.

There's been an excess of X-characters since.. what, 1982? So that's not a totally bad idea to ease up on introducing new mutants. I say this just having read that years-long Messiah Complex-Messiah War run from ~2008-2010.

FF - yeah, I wonder when the last time FF was really a top Marvel book, maybe the 80s? How successful was that Waid run from the early 2000s in sales?

In a way, the Hickman run was pretty crucial, just in the way it showed what Hickman could do. He moved from there to Avengers. It also sold really, really well when one of them died. The Fraction FF with Shehulk, Medusa, Ant-man and, um, She-thing?, was pretty fun as well, and had good art by Allred.

the last super hot FF run i remember was these:
http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2007/04/23/comics-you-should-own-fantastic-four-347-349/

ha, EXACTLY what I was thinking of! that Arthur Adams art was awesome

Can't remember who said there is a mandate not to create new x-characters, but it was someone with inside information

Claremont.

guhhhhh

http://comicsbeat.com/marvel-relaunching-secret-wars-in-2015-in-a-synergistic-fashion-across-the-marvel-brand

fucks sake

i guess Miles Morales is gonna keep showing up in the 616 then...

Those FFs are fun - checked them on MU. Thanks for that. And also this line in the CBR piece:

"Art Adams' women are gorgeous without being skanky."