Marvel Comics blabbery

i think you only need to buy one to read the comics story

variant covers are bullshit and an act of disrespect to readers and of financial violence to retailers

true, but remember polybags? now THAT is an act of disrespect to writers

Do not understand the pull of variant covers. Surely nobody buys these for speculator value any more? Is there even any such thing these days? And if you like the picture, fuck, download the JPG from Marvels's site and buy a cheap-cover copy.

Varient covers are the crystal meth for collector nurds and the greasy sharks that surround them. The worst of the type are the guys who worry about a comic store putting as stamp or sticker on a Comic Book Day freebie. I'm not sure if that rung of hell is above or below the record collector nurds.

People worry about that?! I haven't had anyone complain to me, at least, or I would have started laughing.

So does the nerd variant cover market subsidise the rest of us?

The ones I really don't understand are those sub-Calvin and Hobbes variant covers by - is it Chris Eliopoulos? They're just so... creepy and sad.

It subsidizes retailers and/or pumps up numbers for titles - with the Amazing Spider-Man #1, between two stores I ordered 300 copies IIRC. My price on that would be $670 - I got one 1:300 sketch variant that I sold for $200, two more non-sketch variants of that cover that I sold for $100 apiece and ~10 other variants that sold for $10-75 apiece. I made back all my ASM#1 money before I sold a single issue. That was with a blockbuster, though.

A lot of the variants Marvel solicits these days sell for no premium, you can just order them if you hit a target of some kind - which is a massive PITA. If I normally order 40 of something and they have four variants that are tied to it but - I now have to order 60 if I want the 40 I need for the target plus five of each for the people who want Skottie Young or whatever Deadpool variant is out this week. So I just don't bother with most variants that aren't incentive variants I can sell to defray costs.

Variants can pump up numbers in situations like Star Wars - there's a 1:500 incentive variant and people are talking about ordering 500 just to get that one, when they might sell 100 of the issue itself. I'm not willing to bet that kind of money and have 400 extra copies on the chance I get a mint variant and can find a buyer. I grew up around comics and baseball cards, so I know how speculation works out with this stuff.

I got one 1:300 sketch variant that I sold for $200

I'm glad it helps your store stay afloat, but I just don't get who's made enough to do this. It's not as though it's an actual original sketch, just a printed copy on a crappy floppy

MAD enough

there was a 75th anniversary hagiography on network tv tonight that i taped, curious to see how marvel presents its own history these days

Someone asked me to recommend them issues of Deadpool, which I've never read, so would welcome yr suggestions.

nah

I've never read much Deadpool but I've been enjoying the recent Brian Posehn / Gerry Duggan Deadpool run via Marvel Unlimited. A nice mix of goofy fun stuff and some surprising character depth. I remember liking Gail Simone's Deadpool / Agent X issues back in the early years of the 21st century too.

Kind of looking forward to the day when all this Spiderverse silliness hits Marvel Unlimited

^word

reading the slott silver surfer right now, leaving me a little cold, but the writing is funny

OG Joe Kelly Deadpool run rules

Thank you BG and DJP for the DPool recs, have passed them on

I never followed Marvel in the Liefeld era and Deadpool feels a bit like a private joke I don't get

Or at least I kind of associate him with Robert Kirkman-style comics with no heart and lots of lovingly detailed gruey body stuff

Is that wrong? Or is that right, but the comics are still ok?

Pretty much every Deadpool thing I've read has been hot garbage, but I haven't read much/any of the Deadpool runs that are considered "classic" so my opinion should be taken with a grain of salt.

Half of Joe Kelly's run was spent making fun of Liefeld's nonsense and the other half was spent making fun of the rest of the Marvel Universe

It'll be interesting to see how all the currently Hickman/Avengers/8 months later countdown stuff reads when collected. There are enough intertwined story bits right now that reading it monthly is kind of rewarding. All the stuff he introduced at the beginning of his run has been kept in play and is now starting to flush out!

I can't really think of many other writers/comics events that have juggled different teams and events while keeping all the balls in the air

i find hickman exhausting and unpleasant to read. I'd like to request a moratorium on full page every issue recaps and black page / white text "NOW" dividers.

I used to be on the fence! It's a time investment and it definitely doesn't work for everyone, but pondering how certain characters would react to events, to each other, with the different players and personalities in play and doing it over months instead of pages is something I think he's gotten better at.

his SHIELD series stuff really fell flat for me originally but Secret Warriors was where I got on board with his Marvel work and went back to read the FF/Ultimate FF stuff

i like how bendis has basically just carried over his avengers plotlines/characters to the x-books he's writing now.

can't get on w/ hickman at all.

nice thing about Marvel right now is they have two completely different events with the same set of characters and don't seem to care at all. not sure how I feel about Axis, but it's somewhat interesting

which is fine with me. having strong continuity across the entire line just means you don't get to do what you want with characters

Jason Aaron's Thor is still pretty great!

so far Axis can bite me

Remender has been absolute shit since X-Force. But I wasn't into his pre-X-Force stuff so I'm thinking it's the anomaly and not what I hoped was an upturn in quality.

Don't get me started on "hey guys, we made Falcon into Captain America and then for his first trip out decided he should be EEEEEEEEVIL"

I will cosign x-force tho'

oh his X-Force was great

is Mighty Avengers part of the Axis bullshit or no

Unfortunately yes

Don't really know what thread to ask this on, might as well try this one.

My housemate, and occasional comic reader, was really into Moon Knight as a kid and I thought it might be fun to get him a MK trade for xmas. Are there any good runs from the last decade or so which have been collected?

People have been speaking very highly about the recent Warren Ellis run, but I haven't read it. It's collected in a single cheap trade. There's also the recent but higher-priced Epic Collection featuring the earliest stories (basically the same stuff that's in the first Essential Moon Knight but in color).

The new Ellis run is excellent, I'll cosign that as worth buying for sure.

yeah it pretty much ruled

Cheers, seems like that'll be the one.

xp -- Agreed.

The Bendis/Maleev series (12 issues, 2011-2012) wasn't so great. Scene-setting for Age of Ultron, killed off the character Echo. It did look good, though (I'm a big Maleev fan).

I think I read that and blocked out them killing Echo :/

I liked when she showed up to help in Japan as Ronin and it took until the very end for anyone to realize Ronin didn't catch what you were saying unless you had eye contact, even though there were clues

Didn't realize Echo was dead. Thanks for spoiling a story from three years ago, jeez.

Eh, she disappeared for years at a time anyway

They reprinted the first Moon Knight series also in Marvel Essentials, which you might still be able to find. It's one of those series that really looks just as good in black and white especially Sienkiewicz's artwork.

So, thanks to the success of the Guardians of the Galaxy movie, Marvel has been reprinting Abnett & Lanning's GotG and various related titles (Annihilation Conquest, War of Kings, Realm of Kings, etc), which is nice, because I missed buying them in physical format when they first came out, I was poor back then and read them on the computer. Anyway, the second big GotG collection just came out, and rereading stuff has been tremendously fun and thrilling, I still feel these are among the best comics Marvel has put out in the last decade. (Too bad A&L exited the cosmic Marvel comics, and GotG is now being written by Bendis, in his trademark mediocre style.) They haven't reprinted Abnett & Lanning's Nova though, which is sad, because I remember it being almost as good and thrill-powered as GotG (even if the whole Nova Corps concept is a pretty shameless Green Lantern ripoff). Hopefully the sequel movie will expand the Nova stuff seen in the first movie and introduce Richard Rider, so they'd have an excuse to reprint that run too.

Yeah, the lack of Nova re-reprints is just Marvel being Marvel. The two books were pretty intimately linked and tied into no fewer than four crossovers. If they're smart, they'll put out a couple of Cosmic Marvel omnibi after the upcoming Annihilation: Conquest omnibus and collect this material in a way that makes sense.

FYI, Abnett is currently writing a new Guardians title featuring the OG team.