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Marvel Cinematic Universe - Can Deadpool Save the MCU? You betcha, friendo! (8 Viewers)

Whedon on Age of Ultron:

“Well, because there was a book called 'Age of Ultron' quite recently, a lot of people have assumed that is what we're doing, but that is not the case,” Whedon reportedly reveals in the interview. “We're doing our own version of the origin story for Ultron. In the origin story, there was Hank Pym, so a lot of people assumed that he will be in the mix. He's not. We're basically taking the things from the comics for the movies that we need and can use. A lot of stuff has to fall by the wayside."

"We're crafting our own version of it where his origin comes more directly from The Avengers we already know about.” Whedon reportedly continues. “It's a little bit darker than the other film because Ultron is in the house. There's a science fiction theme that wasn't there in the other one. Ultron is definitely something that evolves, so we're going to get together a couple of different iterations. Nothing can be translated exactly as it was from the comics; particularly Ultron."
"We're crafting our own version of it where his origin comes more directly from The Avengers we already know about.” Whedon reportedly continues. “It's a little bit darker than the other film because Ultron is in the house. There's a science fiction theme that wasn't there in the other one. Ultron is definitely something that evolves, so we're going to get together a couple of different iterations. Nothing can be translated exactly as it was from the comics; particularly Ultron."
I hate how much this sounds like they don't want any new characters stepping on old characters toes. Between Banner and Stark theres no room for a third scientist, who is smarter than both of them and creates Ultron -- no big deal...

We're never gonna see the pissing contests between Richards, Banner, Stark and Pym.
Because it's the movies, unfortunately. With comics you have all the space and breathing room you need to have as many characters you want, even if some of them overlap in terms of skills or personalities. With the movies, there's two hours(ish) to have solid character development and a story people can enjoy. The more people you introduce, the harder that becomes, and there's little room for overlapping skills or personalities. With movies, you have to justify a character's inclusion in a way comics don't. Pym can't be justified... well, yet, anyway.

 
SO they are probably going to have Stark create Ultron instead of Pym,

No biggie, the whole pym/Wasp story was meh anyway, glad they are not doing that.

 
I've seen speculation that Ultron might be an evolution of Jarvis. I mean... Jarvis was already running suits during IM3.

 
just a rant, but DC dominated the superhero mythose for awhile, until they got into the Earth 2 and retcon BS, Marvel has taken this turn now with all of these different universes and realities.

 
just a rant, but DC dominated the superhero mythose for awhile, until they got into the Earth 2 and retcon BS, Marvel has taken this turn now with all of these different universes and realities.
What do you mean?

Marvel currently pretty well just has its Regular 616 Canon, the Ultimate line (which is fading out), and they cinematic/television stuff.

If you mean that you are frustrated because their characters are spread out over 3 movie houses... fox having x-men, sony having spider-man... i would agree that's frustrating.

But by no means do i expect that the movie character needs to follow the exact path as the comic character.. The comics have an advantage of being able to flesh out an entire story over years... the movie gets a chance to tell one story in 2 tidy hours.

 
just a rant, but DC dominated the superhero mythose for awhile, until they got into the Earth 2 and retcon BS, Marvel has taken this turn now with all of these different universes and realities.
It really depends on the medium. DC hasn't dominated comics for as long as I've been alive - the last time they had a better year than Marvel was decades ago. They'll occasionally have a better month, like when they do a big gimmick, but by the end of the year, Marvel always wins. Now, television, that's completely different. DC dominated Marvel in animation until the just the past few years. DC has been crushing Marvel in live action television for about 15 years? I guess? SHIELD is really the first live action show they've had, so Marvel bowed to DC by default going all the way back to Birds of Prey and Smallville. In the movies, Marvel has decimated DC in both the number of films and the amount of money they've made when you consider the output of both companies' characters going back to the first Superman movie in 1978.

The one area that DC really crushed Marvel was in merchandising and brand awareness. There isn't an American alive who doesn't know who Superman is. Or Batman or Wonder Woman. On the Marvel side, until recently, only Spider-Man had that same reach. Things are different now with the success of the Avengers family of movies and the X-Men/Wolverine movies, but for decades upon decades, DC's characters were front and center in the public's mind, much more so than any Marvel character.

 
danielmclark said:
Rove! said:
just a rant, but DC dominated the superhero mythose for awhile, until they got into the Earth 2 and retcon BS, Marvel has taken this turn now with all of these different universes and realities.
It really depends on the medium. DC hasn't dominated comics for as long as I've been alive - the last time they had a better year than Marvel was decades ago. They'll occasionally have a better month, like when they do a big gimmick, but by the end of the year, Marvel always wins. Now, television, that's completely different. DC dominated Marvel in animation until the just the past few years. DC has been crushing Marvel in live action television for about 15 years? I guess? SHIELD is really the first live action show they've had, so Marvel bowed to DC by default going all the way back to Birds of Prey and Smallville. In the movies, Marvel has decimated DC in both the number of films and the amount of money they've made when you consider the output of both companies' characters going back to the first Superman movie in 1978.

The one area that DC really crushed Marvel was in merchandising and brand awareness. There isn't an American alive who doesn't know who Superman is. Or Batman or Wonder Woman. On the Marvel side, until recently, only Spider-Man had that same reach. Things are different now with the success of the Avengers family of movies and the X-Men/Wolverine movies, but for decades upon decades, DC's characters were front and center in the public's mind, much more so than any Marvel character.
I thought the year DC started the "new 52" that they actually beat Marvel in comics.. which led them to basically do the same thing with "marvel NOW" and "all-new Marvel NOW".. basically admitting that issue numbers up over 200 were bad for new readership and that they always had to be developing new readers... so then Marvel took back over once they admitted that and did it.

I agree that in brand awareness that Batman and Superman beat everything Marvel has other than Spider-man.. and he's still a distant 3rd...

But I think that the 3-10 spots of brand awareness are almost fully Marvel... DC doesn't have that 3rd/4th person.. which is why of their comics there are like 7 Batman titles and several more superman titles.

 
danielmclark said:
Rove! said:
just a rant, but DC dominated the superhero mythose for awhile, until they got into the Earth 2 and retcon BS, Marvel has taken this turn now with all of these different universes and realities.
It really depends on the medium. DC hasn't dominated comics for as long as I've been alive - the last time they had a better year than Marvel was decades ago. They'll occasionally have a better month, like when they do a big gimmick, but by the end of the year, Marvel always wins. Now, television, that's completely different. DC dominated Marvel in animation until the just the past few years. DC has been crushing Marvel in live action television for about 15 years? I guess? SHIELD is really the first live action show they've had, so Marvel bowed to DC by default going all the way back to Birds of Prey and Smallville. In the movies, Marvel has decimated DC in both the number of films and the amount of money they've made when you consider the output of both companies' characters going back to the first Superman movie in 1978.

The one area that DC really crushed Marvel was in merchandising and brand awareness. There isn't an American alive who doesn't know who Superman is. Or Batman or Wonder Woman. On the Marvel side, until recently, only Spider-Man had that same reach. Things are different now with the success of the Avengers family of movies and the X-Men/Wolverine movies, but for decades upon decades, DC's characters were front and center in the public's mind, much more so than any Marvel character.
I thought the year DC started the "new 52" that they actually beat Marvel in comics.. which led them to basically do the same thing with "marvel NOW" and "all-new Marvel NOW".. basically admitting that issue numbers up over 200 were bad for new readership and that they always had to be developing new readers... so then Marvel took back over once they admitted that and did it.

I agree that in brand awareness that Batman and Superman beat everything Marvel has other than Spider-man.. and he's still a distant 3rd...

But I think that the 3-10 spots of brand awareness are almost fully Marvel... DC doesn't have that 3rd/4th person.. which is why of their comics there are like 7 Batman titles and several more superman titles.
That was 2011. If they had done it earlier in the year they might have had a shot at unseating Marvel, but two things worked against them. First, they announced the end of their universe almost a year before the relaunch which resulted in a lot of readers just giving up on titles they knew would be ending anyway. Sales were depressed throughout 2011. And second, they rebooted in September, so they only had four months of the year to work with. Had they waited until January 2012 to reboot, I'd wager they would have beaten Marvel that year. As it was, they got their massive boost for a few months starting in September, then collectors started dropping out. Then the regular readers started dropping out. By mid-2012 (IIRC), sales were back where they were before the reboot.

 
I read comics for a long time - still read Batman under Scott Snyder.

Marvel is pumping out a ton of junk weekly - plus like 4-5 avengers books and 3-5 xmen monthly. Marvel is lacking in originality - but there's no way they are not going to win total sales.

 
The Dude said:
I read comics for a long time - still read Batman under Scott Snyder.

Marvel is pumping out a ton of junk weekly - plus like 4-5 avengers books and 3-5 xmen monthly. Marvel is lacking in originality - but there's no way they are not going to win total sales.
The spider-man titles - Dan Slott has been excellent with this Superior Spider-man idea, Deadpool, and Daredevil are all very good.. i don't read avengers or x-men... but a buddy of mine loves Avengers Arena.. is gutted it's ending.

 
I love the slow burn of Superior Spider-Man. It's starting to come to a head and will be ending in a few months, but it's been a great read. I'm less impressed with the direction Avengers has taken over the past year or two - the cinematic Avengers is much better, to my mind. I like the smaller team, the smaller scope (though that'll be changing when they do the Thanos story of course).

 
I love the slow burn of Superior Spider-Man. It's starting to come to a head and will be ending in a few months, but it's been a great read.
Slott slow burns everything he's done since Big Time and it's all been pretty great. The other title Superior Spider-Man Team Up is also good though.

 
Marvel is pumping out a ton of junk Marvel is lacking in originality -
That's like a total °180 from 30 years of comics that I knew.
Marvel has been chasing DC in originality for about the last 15 years
Though you wouldn't know it by the sales numbers, where Marvel has been crushing DC for every one of those 15 years.
True. Even their "relaunch" with Marvel Now is a rooted in the DC's New 52

 
Marvel is pumping out a ton of junk Marvel is lacking in originality -
That's like a total °180 from 30 years of comics that I knew.
Marvel has been chasing DC in originality for about the last 15 years
Though you wouldn't know it by the sales numbers, where Marvel has been crushing DC for every one of those 15 years.
True. Even their "relaunch" with Marvel Now is a rooted in the DC's New 52
Except it's not. The New 52 wiped out the entire universe and reimagined every single character (with the exception of Batman and Green Lantern). Marvel's NOW efforts have not done that in the slightest. In fact, the only thing the two have in common is that Marvel started renumbering a bunch of series. That's it. That's the only thing they have in common. If you're maybe thinking that a bunch of costume changes is some sort of copycat move, Marvel has never stuck their characters in only one costume. They've had multiple variations for as long as the characters have been in existence.

The characters' history at Marvel hasn't changed - and that was the entire point of the New 52.

 
I read comics for a long time - still read Batman under Scott Snyder.

Marvel is pumping out a ton of junk weekly - plus like 4-5 avengers books and 3-5 xmen monthly. Marvel is lacking in originality - but there's no way they are not going to win total sales.
I think Marvel has played it safe with their storylines going all the way back to the whole X-Men Onslaught thing. On the contrary, I think DC has taken significant chances with their storylines.

Where DC has really taken a hit is in their inability to produce marketable characters outside of Batman and Superman. That Green Lantern movie didn't help.

 
Marvel is pumping out a ton of junk Marvel is lacking in originality -
That's like a total °180 from 30 years of comics that I knew.
Marvel has been chasing DC in originality for about the last 15 years
Though you wouldn't know it by the sales numbers, where Marvel has been crushing DC for every one of those 15 years.
True. Even their "relaunch" with Marvel Now is a rooted in the DC's New 52
Except it's not. The New 52 wiped out the entire universe and reimagined every single character (with the exception of Batman and Green Lantern). Marvel's NOW efforts have not done that in the slightest. In fact, the only thing the two have in common is that Marvel started renumbering a bunch of series. That's it. That's the only thing they have in common. If you're maybe thinking that a bunch of costume changes is some sort of copycat move, Marvel has never stuck their characters in only one costume. They've had multiple variations for as long as the characters have been in existence.

The characters' history at Marvel hasn't changed - and that was the entire point of the New 52.
True in the details. Marvel saw the sales go up when DC introduced the new 52. So what does Marvel do - they introduce Marvel Now for no reason (like you noted) other than to allow them to change all their numbering systems back to #1 to boost sales. DC's move was unique - and spawned some good stories out of it - Marvel just went with a money grab.

 
Marvel is pumping out a ton of junk Marvel is lacking in originality -
That's like a total °180 from 30 years of comics that I knew.
Marvel has been chasing DC in originality for about the last 15 years
Though you wouldn't know it by the sales numbers, where Marvel has been crushing DC for every one of those 15 years.
True. Even their "relaunch" with Marvel Now is a rooted in the DC's New 52
Except it's not. The New 52 wiped out the entire universe and reimagined every single character (with the exception of Batman and Green Lantern). Marvel's NOW efforts have not done that in the slightest. In fact, the only thing the two have in common is that Marvel started renumbering a bunch of series. That's it. That's the only thing they have in common. If you're maybe thinking that a bunch of costume changes is some sort of copycat move, Marvel has never stuck their characters in only one costume. They've had multiple variations for as long as the characters have been in existence.

The characters' history at Marvel hasn't changed - and that was the entire point of the New 52.
True in the details. Marvel saw the sales go up when DC introduced the new 52. So what does Marvel do - they introduce Marvel Now for no reason (like you noted) other than to allow them to change all their numbering systems back to #1 to boost sales. DC's move was unique - and spawned some good stories out of it - Marvel just went with a money grab.
History of comics. Was it a money grab when DC "copied" Marvel in doing company-wide crossovers? Secret Wars came first, DC changed the format a bit and did Crisis on Infinite Earths. Rebooting/relaunching/renumbering is something that goes back to the beginning of the Silver age more than 50 years ago. The two companies have been going back and forth, bouncing off each other, the whole time. There's really no such thing as "Marvel copied DC", or vice-versa, in the modern age, because you can always go back further and find a time when the opposite was true. And the further back you go, the less it matters.

Incidentally, Marvel NOW was not anything special, it was merely an extension of what they've been doing every year or two for the past couple of decades - though this time it's less of a company-wide crossover and more of a branding initiative. They actually did the same thing with The Heroic Age back in 2010, but nobody said DC was copying them when they did the New 52 a year later.

 
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Marvel is pumping out a ton of junk Marvel is lacking in originality -
That's like a total °180 from 30 years of comics that I knew.
Marvel has been chasing DC in originality for about the last 15 years
Though you wouldn't know it by the sales numbers, where Marvel has been crushing DC for every one of those 15 years.
True. Even their "relaunch" with Marvel Now is a rooted in the DC's New 52
Except it's not. The New 52 wiped out the entire universe and reimagined every single character (with the exception of Batman and Green Lantern). Marvel's NOW efforts have not done that in the slightest. In fact, the only thing the two have in common is that Marvel started renumbering a bunch of series. That's it. That's the only thing they have in common. If you're maybe thinking that a bunch of costume changes is some sort of copycat move, Marvel has never stuck their characters in only one costume. They've had multiple variations for as long as the characters have been in existence.

The characters' history at Marvel hasn't changed - and that was the entire point of the New 52.
True in the details. Marvel saw the sales go up when DC introduced the new 52. So what does Marvel do - they introduce Marvel Now for no reason (like you noted) other than to allow them to change all their numbering systems back to #1 to boost sales. DC's move was unique - and spawned some good stories out of it - Marvel just went with a money grab.
History of comics. Was it a money grab when DC "copied" Marvel in doing company-wide crossovers? Secret Wars came first, DC changed the format a bit and did Crisis on Infinite Earths. Rebooting/relaunching/renumbering is something that goes back to the beginning of the Silver age more than 50 years ago. The two companies have been going back and forth, bouncing off each other, the whole time. There's really no such thing as "Marvel copied DC", or vice-versa, in the modern age, because you can always go back further and find a time when the opposite was true. And the further back you go, the less it matters.

Incidentally, Marvel NOW was not anything special, it was merely an extension of what they've been doing every year or two for the past couple of decades - though this time it's less of a company-wide crossover and more of a branding initiative. They actually did the same thing with The Heroic Age back in 2010, but nobody said DC was copying them when they did the New 52 a year later.
Marvel just does it better.

Although one of my favorite music quotes ever = "and I think the whole world should of cried, on the day Jack Kirby died"

 
Marvel is pumping out a ton of junk Marvel is lacking in originality -
That's like a total °180 from 30 years of comics that I knew.
Marvel has been chasing DC in originality for about the last 15 years
Though you wouldn't know it by the sales numbers, where Marvel has been crushing DC for every one of those 15 years.
True. Even their "relaunch" with Marvel Now is a rooted in the DC's New 52
Except it's not. The New 52 wiped out the entire universe and reimagined every single character (with the exception of Batman and Green Lantern). Marvel's NOW efforts have not done that in the slightest. In fact, the only thing the two have in common is that Marvel started renumbering a bunch of series. That's it. That's the only thing they have in common. If you're maybe thinking that a bunch of costume changes is some sort of copycat move, Marvel has never stuck their characters in only one costume. They've had multiple variations for as long as the characters have been in existence.

The characters' history at Marvel hasn't changed - and that was the entire point of the New 52.
True in the details. Marvel saw the sales go up when DC introduced the new 52. So what does Marvel do - they introduce Marvel Now for no reason (like you noted) other than to allow them to change all their numbering systems back to #1 to boost sales. DC's move was unique - and spawned some good stories out of it - Marvel just went with a money grab.
History of comics. Was it a money grab when DC "copied" Marvel in doing company-wide crossovers? Secret Wars came first, DC changed the format a bit and did Crisis on Infinite Earths. Rebooting/relaunching/renumbering is something that goes back to the beginning of the Silver age more than 50 years ago. The two companies have been going back and forth, bouncing off each other, the whole time. There's really no such thing as "Marvel copied DC", or vice-versa, in the modern age, because you can always go back further and find a time when the opposite was true. And the further back you go, the less it matters.

Incidentally, Marvel NOW was not anything special, it was merely an extension of what they've been doing every year or two for the past couple of decades - though this time it's less of a company-wide crossover and more of a branding initiative. They actually did the same thing with The Heroic Age back in 2010, but nobody said DC was copying them when they did the New 52 a year later.
You seem to be arguing in circles - you started with New 52<>Marvel Now and now you are on the Heroic age = New 52. While I agree with you over the long haul it probably evens out but over the last 10-15 the creativity has been mostly at DC. You can discount as IMO if you want but I have read industry analysis on it a few years back,

 
Marvel is pumping out a ton of junk Marvel is lacking in originality -
That's like a total °180 from 30 years of comics that I knew.
Marvel has been chasing DC in originality for about the last 15 years
Though you wouldn't know it by the sales numbers, where Marvel has been crushing DC for every one of those 15 years.
True. Even their "relaunch" with Marvel Now is a rooted in the DC's New 52
Except it's not. The New 52 wiped out the entire universe and reimagined every single character (with the exception of Batman and Green Lantern). Marvel's NOW efforts have not done that in the slightest. In fact, the only thing the two have in common is that Marvel started renumbering a bunch of series. That's it. That's the only thing they have in common. If you're maybe thinking that a bunch of costume changes is some sort of copycat move, Marvel has never stuck their characters in only one costume. They've had multiple variations for as long as the characters have been in existence.

The characters' history at Marvel hasn't changed - and that was the entire point of the New 52.
True in the details. Marvel saw the sales go up when DC introduced the new 52. So what does Marvel do - they introduce Marvel Now for no reason (like you noted) other than to allow them to change all their numbering systems back to #1 to boost sales. DC's move was unique - and spawned some good stories out of it - Marvel just went with a money grab.
History of comics. Was it a money grab when DC "copied" Marvel in doing company-wide crossovers? Secret Wars came first, DC changed the format a bit and did Crisis on Infinite Earths. Rebooting/relaunching/renumbering is something that goes back to the beginning of the Silver age more than 50 years ago. The two companies have been going back and forth, bouncing off each other, the whole time. There's really no such thing as "Marvel copied DC", or vice-versa, in the modern age, because you can always go back further and find a time when the opposite was true. And the further back you go, the less it matters.

Incidentally, Marvel NOW was not anything special, it was merely an extension of what they've been doing every year or two for the past couple of decades - though this time it's less of a company-wide crossover and more of a branding initiative. They actually did the same thing with The Heroic Age back in 2010, but nobody said DC was copying them when they did the New 52 a year later.
Marvel just does it better.

Although one of my favorite music quotes ever = "and I think the whole world should of cried, on the day Jack Kirby died"
Marvels big advantage was that the characters in their universe continually interacted with one another; across their titles. Spidey couldn't help running into Daredevil or swinging by the Baxter Building. DC (except for Worlds Finest and an occasional team up) seemed to almost keep their heroes isolated from one another. They've gotten a helluva lot better in creating a tighter knit community.

 
We can all agree at least, that the Marvel NOW run has been a millionty times better than the New 52.
Hey, man, I am running the risk of seeming like a DC fanboy but what was Marvel Now better at? There was no objective to Marvel Now but a money grab. While DC attempted to reinvent some stuff - although I am not sure the reinvention part was successful. I will say that Batman by Snyder is flat out the best book month to month on the market. And you can look up the reviews to confirm that.

 
Marvel is pumping out a ton of junk Marvel is lacking in originality -
That's like a total °180 from 30 years of comics that I knew.
Marvel has been chasing DC in originality for about the last 15 years
Though you wouldn't know it by the sales numbers, where Marvel has been crushing DC for every one of those 15 years.
True. Even their "relaunch" with Marvel Now is a rooted in the DC's New 52
Except it's not. The New 52 wiped out the entire universe and reimagined every single character (with the exception of Batman and Green Lantern). Marvel's NOW efforts have not done that in the slightest. In fact, the only thing the two have in common is that Marvel started renumbering a bunch of series. That's it. That's the only thing they have in common. If you're maybe thinking that a bunch of costume changes is some sort of copycat move, Marvel has never stuck their characters in only one costume. They've had multiple variations for as long as the characters have been in existence.

The characters' history at Marvel hasn't changed - and that was the entire point of the New 52.
True in the details. Marvel saw the sales go up when DC introduced the new 52. So what does Marvel do - they introduce Marvel Now for no reason (like you noted) other than to allow them to change all their numbering systems back to #1 to boost sales. DC's move was unique - and spawned some good stories out of it - Marvel just went with a money grab.
History of comics. Was it a money grab when DC "copied" Marvel in doing company-wide crossovers? Secret Wars came first, DC changed the format a bit and did Crisis on Infinite Earths. Rebooting/relaunching/renumbering is something that goes back to the beginning of the Silver age more than 50 years ago. The two companies have been going back and forth, bouncing off each other, the whole time. There's really no such thing as "Marvel copied DC", or vice-versa, in the modern age, because you can always go back further and find a time when the opposite was true. And the further back you go, the less it matters.

Incidentally, Marvel NOW was not anything special, it was merely an extension of what they've been doing every year or two for the past couple of decades - though this time it's less of a company-wide crossover and more of a branding initiative. They actually did the same thing with The Heroic Age back in 2010, but nobody said DC was copying them when they did the New 52 a year later.
You seem to be arguing in circles - you started with New 52<>Marvel Now and now you are on the Heroic age = New 52. While I agree with you over the long haul it probably evens out but over the last 10-15 the creativity has been mostly at DC. You can discount as IMO if you want but I have read industry analysis on it a few years back,
If it seems that way, it's because you're not understanding me. I don't know if that's my fault or yours, but I never said The Heroic Age and The New 52 were the same thing. I said Marvel NOW and The Heroic Age were the same thing. They are both branding initiatives that included a small slate of new #1's and some relaunches. They are nothing like the New 52 because they didn't push the reset button on the characters themselves the way New 52 did.

The creativity has been mostly at DC over the past 15 years? Let's recap a little of what's happened in the last 15 years - that puts us back to 1999, yes? Nothing happened in 1999. Nothing happened in 2000. 2001 gave us Our Worlds at War, a minor event similar to 1988's Invasion event. 2002 was a small Joker event, Last Laugh. 2004, Identity Crisis, a genuinely good series. 2005, Infinite Crisis, another Crisis event. Total lack of creativity. 2006, 52, the big news there was that it was a weekly series. Ooooh. Yeah, that's never been done before, except it absolutely has - and DC themselves did it with Action Comics Weekly in the late 80's. Let's see, what else. 2007, Countdown to Final Crisis, another weekly series just like 52, nothing particularly creative there. Then Final Crisis in 2008, yet another Crisis event - the second in three years! It took DC twenty years to do another Crisis after Infinite Earths, but the lack of creativity was so massive at DC in the 00's that they went back to that well twice in three years. They wrapped up the old universe with Blackest Night in 2009 - Marvel had already done a couple of Marvel Zombies series at that point, so zombified heroes weren't exactly new - then another weekly series in 2010 just like Countdown and 52. Then we got the New 52! A massive reboot of all the classic characters! Surely that's never been done before! Except that totally had been done before when DC themselves rebooted all their Golden Age characters in the early 60's to catch up with Marvel, who was ushering in the Silver Age. The only difference was back then, they didn't do a Flashpoint-style event to make the transition, they just introduced all the rebooted characters organically.

Whew. Now, obviously that's just the events, but if you want to talk about individual story arcs or series or characters, that's beyond the scope of this thread, which I acknowledge that I've completely derailed already (but I'd like to turn that around after this).

I've been collecting comics and keeping up with the industry for 30 years. I'm not perfect, I don't have all the answers or every scrap of information in my head. But I know the trends. I'm not always right, but I've got the broad strokes down. DC Comics over the last 15 years was getting killed so badly that they felt they needed to wipe out their entire universe and start over. What you see as creativity? It wasn't. It was a response to decades of getting crushed by Marvel at every turn. It was a business decision.

Lastly, I'm a huge DC fan. I know it doesn't sound like it, but my first comic was Crisis on Infinite Earths #10, and I was a staunch DC fanboy for years. I only started reading Marvel in the early 90's, and even then, I thought it was inferior to my beloved DC. I've since gotten older and more objective, but my heart still lies with DC. I just hate what the current executive team has wrought. Jim Lee continues to be the worst thing that ever happened to the industry and Dan DiDio needs to be booted out of the industry. And maybe they should stop hiring people, like Bob Harras, who were in charge at Marvel in the 90's and who ran the company into the ground. DC needs a turnaround because even after alienating all their die hard fans with the New 52, they're still losing to Marvel. And I hate that.

Let's go back to the Marvel Cinematic Universe discussion. This has been fun, but waaaaay off-topic :lol:

 
Marvel is pumping out a ton of junk Marvel is lacking in originality -
That's like a total °180 from 30 years of comics that I knew.
Marvel has been chasing DC in originality for about the last 15 years
Though you wouldn't know it by the sales numbers, where Marvel has been crushing DC for every one of those 15 years.
True. Even their "relaunch" with Marvel Now is a rooted in the DC's New 52
Except it's not. The New 52 wiped out the entire universe and reimagined every single character (with the exception of Batman and Green Lantern). Marvel's NOW efforts have not done that in the slightest. In fact, the only thing the two have in common is that Marvel started renumbering a bunch of series. That's it. That's the only thing they have in common. If you're maybe thinking that a bunch of costume changes is some sort of copycat move, Marvel has never stuck their characters in only one costume. They've had multiple variations for as long as the characters have been in existence.

The characters' history at Marvel hasn't changed - and that was the entire point of the New 52.
True in the details. Marvel saw the sales go up when DC introduced the new 52. So what does Marvel do - they introduce Marvel Now for no reason (like you noted) other than to allow them to change all their numbering systems back to #1 to boost sales. DC's move was unique - and spawned some good stories out of it - Marvel just went with a money grab.
History of comics. Was it a money grab when DC "copied" Marvel in doing company-wide crossovers? Secret Wars came first, DC changed the format a bit and did Crisis on Infinite Earths. Rebooting/relaunching/renumbering is something that goes back to the beginning of the Silver age more than 50 years ago. The two companies have been going back and forth, bouncing off each other, the whole time. There's really no such thing as "Marvel copied DC", or vice-versa, in the modern age, because you can always go back further and find a time when the opposite was true. And the further back you go, the less it matters.

Incidentally, Marvel NOW was not anything special, it was merely an extension of what they've been doing every year or two for the past couple of decades - though this time it's less of a company-wide crossover and more of a branding initiative. They actually did the same thing with The Heroic Age back in 2010, but nobody said DC was copying them when they did the New 52 a year later.
You seem to be arguing in circles - you started with New 52<>Marvel Now and now you are on the Heroic age = New 52. While I agree with you over the long haul it probably evens out but over the last 10-15 the creativity has been mostly at DC. You can discount as IMO if you want but I have read industry analysis on it a few years back,
If it seems that way, it's because you're not understanding me. I don't know if that's my fault or yours, but I never said The Heroic Age and The New 52 were the same thing. I said Marvel NOW and The Heroic Age were the same thing. They are both branding initiatives that included a small slate of new #1's and some relaunches. They are nothing like the New 52 because they didn't push the reset button on the characters themselves the way New 52 did.

The creativity has been mostly at DC over the past 15 years? Let's recap a little of what's happened in the last 15 years - that puts us back to 1999, yes? Nothing happened in 1999. Nothing happened in 2000. 2001 gave us Our Worlds at War, a minor event similar to 1988's Invasion event. 2002 was a small Joker event, Last Laugh. 2004, Identity Crisis, a genuinely good series. 2005, Infinite Crisis, another Crisis event. Total lack of creativity. 2006, 52, the big news there was that it was a weekly series. Ooooh. Yeah, that's never been done before, except it absolutely has - and DC themselves did it with Action Comics Weekly in the late 80's. Let's see, what else. 2007, Countdown to Final Crisis, another weekly series just like 52, nothing particularly creative there. Then Final Crisis in 2008, yet another Crisis event - the second in three years! It took DC twenty years to do another Crisis after Infinite Earths, but the lack of creativity was so massive at DC in the 00's that they went back to that well twice in three years. They wrapped up the old universe with Blackest Night in 2009 - Marvel had already done a couple of Marvel Zombies series at that point, so zombified heroes weren't exactly new - then another weekly series in 2010 just like Countdown and 52. Then we got the New 52! A massive reboot of all the classic characters! Surely that's never been done before! Except that totally had been done before when DC themselves rebooted all their Golden Age characters in the early 60's to catch up with Marvel, who was ushering in the Silver Age. The only difference was back then, they didn't do a Flashpoint-style event to make the transition, they just introduced all the rebooted characters organically.

Whew. Now, obviously that's just the events, but if you want to talk about individual story arcs or series or characters, that's beyond the scope of this thread, which I acknowledge that I've completely derailed already (but I'd like to turn that around after this).

I've been collecting comics and keeping up with the industry for 30 years. I'm not perfect, I don't have all the answers or every scrap of information in my head. But I know the trends. I'm not always right, but I've got the broad strokes down. DC Comics over the last 15 years was getting killed so badly that they felt they needed to wipe out their entire universe and start over. What you see as creativity? It wasn't. It was a response to decades of getting crushed by Marvel at every turn. It was a business decision.

Lastly, I'm a huge DC fan. I know it doesn't sound like it, but my first comic was Crisis on Infinite Earths #10, and I was a staunch DC fanboy for years. I only started reading Marvel in the early 90's, and even then, I thought it was inferior to my beloved DC. I've since gotten older and more objective, but my heart still lies with DC. I just hate what the current executive team has wrought. Jim Lee continues to be the worst thing that ever happened to the industry and Dan DiDio needs to be booted out of the industry. And maybe they should stop hiring people, like Bob Harras, who were in charge at Marvel in the 90's and who ran the company into the ground. DC needs a turnaround because even after alienating all their die hard fans with the New 52, they're still losing to Marvel. And I hate that.

Let's go back to the Marvel Cinematic Universe discussion. This has been fun, but waaaaay off-topic :lol:
No Man's Land was 1999. That was pretty good.

 
We can all agree at least, that the Marvel NOW run has been a millionty times better than the New 52.
Hey, man, I am running the risk of seeming like a DC fanboy but what was Marvel Now better at? There was no objective to Marvel Now but a money grab. While DC attempted to reinvent some stuff - although I am not sure the reinvention part was successful. I will say that Batman by Snyder is flat out the best book month to month on the market. And you can look up the reviews to confirm that.
The Avengers run in Marvel Now has been amazing. The X-men run has also been amazing, in fact the only comics from Marvel Now which I don't enjoy are the ones that seems to get the most attention, Superior Spiderman and Avengers Arena.

Marvel Now comics worth reading:

-Thor: God of Thunder

-Sif

-All-new X-men, Uncanny X-men and X-men

-Hawkeye

-Black Widow

-Wolverine

-Nova

-A+X

-Indestructible Hulk

-Secret Avengers, Avengers Assemble and Avengers

-Thunderbolts

And I really enjoyed Thanos Rising, despite how weirdly it was written.

Also, if we're talking about cape comics I can't comment on which is the best regular series as I read very little DC anymore, but I will say Saga is the best semi-regular comic I've read since The Walking Dead and Transmetro.

 
Do you guys think Whedon will kill off one of the core Avengers in Age of Ulton?
I would be shocked if they killed off any of the big characters. First that would be a real slap at canon. Second I think Disney would find it a little disconcerting for their money truck to lose an asset.

 
Do you guys think Whedon will kill off one of the core Avengers in Age of Ulton?
I would be shocked if they killed off any of the big characters. First that would be a real slap at canon. Second I think Disney would find it a little disconcerting for their money truck to lose an asset.
Agreed. I wouldn't put it past Whedon, but I don't think Disney would go for it... unless it was one of the minor members. No way they whack Iron Man, Cap, Thor or Hulk, but I could see them getting rid of Hawkeye or Black Widow. Though being the only woman, I'd say Black Widow is pretty safe.

 
We can all agree at least, that the Marvel NOW run has been a millionty times better than the New 52.
Hey, man, I am running the risk of seeming like a DC fanboy but what was Marvel Now better at? There was no objective to Marvel Now but a money grab. While DC attempted to reinvent some stuff - although I am not sure the reinvention part was successful. I will say that Batman by Snyder is flat out the best book month to month on the market. And you can look up the reviews to confirm that.
The Avengers run in Marvel Now has been amazing. The X-men run has also been amazing, in fact the only comics from Marvel Now which I don't enjoy are the ones that seems to get the most attention, Superior Spiderman and Avengers Arena.

Marvel Now comics worth reading:

-Thor: God of Thunder

-Sif

-All-new X-men, Uncanny X-men and X-men

-Hawkeye

-Black Widow

-Wolverine

-Nova

-A+X

-Indestructible Hulk

-Secret Avengers, Avengers Assemble and Avengers

-Thunderbolts

And I really enjoyed Thanos Rising, despite how weirdly it was written.

Also, if we're talking about cape comics I can't comment on which is the best regular series as I read very little DC anymore, but I will say Saga is the best semi-regular comic I've read since The Walking Dead and Transmetro.
Saga is very interesting, but not as good as Y the Last Man a few years back by the same author IMO.. although Saga isn't over yet, so who knows how i'll feel at issue 60.

interesting that you read all the marvel stuff I won't touch, and I read all the stuff you won't touch... Superior Spider-Man, Spider-Man Team-Up, enjoyed Scarlet Spider and Venom while they were going, superior carnage... basically if it's in the spider-man world I'm reading it... if it's in the Deadpool world I'm reading it... and if it's in the Daredevil world, I might read it... none of which you mentioned.

something for everyone I guess.

I enjoyed the first 20 issues of Snyder's Batman Run until i realized that Batman was becoming just like Spider-Man where if you weren't reading all the issues in the family you were missing parts of the story... and I wasn't going to commit to 5 titles of the Batman world... so I just said forget it.

 
Do you guys think Whedon will kill off one of the core Avengers in Age of Ulton?
I would be shocked if they killed off any of the big characters. First that would be a real slap at canon. Second I think Disney would find it a little disconcerting for their money truck to lose an asset.
Agreed. I wouldn't put it past Whedon, but I don't think Disney would go for it... unless it was one of the minor members. No way they whack Iron Man, Cap, Thor or Hulk, but I could see them getting rid of Hawkeye or Black Widow. Though being the only woman, I'd say Black Widow is pretty safe.
Yeah I think they would let Whedon weed out some bit players but not the marquee folks. And yeah all the backlash against Marvel over the woman thing probably means BW and her tight leather outfits are safe.

 
Do you guys think Whedon will kill off one of the core Avengers in Age of Ulton?
I would be shocked if they killed off any of the big characters. First that would be a real slap at canon. Second I think Disney would find it a little disconcerting for their money truck to lose an asset.
Agreed. I wouldn't put it past Whedon, but I don't think Disney would go for it... unless it was one of the minor members. No way they whack Iron Man, Cap, Thor or Hulk, but I could see them getting rid of Hawkeye or Black Widow. Though being the only woman, I'd say Black Widow is pretty safe.
Yeah I think they would let Whedon weed out some bit players but not the marquee folks. And yeah all the backlash against Marvel over the woman thing probably means BW and her tight leather outfits are safe.
If it wasn't for the female issue, BW would be an interesting choice. I feel like if anyone is going to get whacked it will be Hawkeye.

 
Do you guys think Whedon will kill off one of the core Avengers in Age of Ulton?
I would be shocked if they killed off any of the big characters. First that would be a real slap at canon. Second I think Disney would find it a little disconcerting for their money truck to lose an asset.
Agreed. I wouldn't put it past Whedon, but I don't think Disney would go for it... unless it was one of the minor members. No way they whack Iron Man, Cap, Thor or Hulk, but I could see them getting rid of Hawkeye or Black Widow. Though being the only woman, I'd say Black Widow is pretty safe.
Yeah I think they would let Whedon weed out some bit players but not the marquee folks. And yeah all the backlash against Marvel over the woman thing probably means BW and her tight leather outfits are safe.
If it wasn't for the female issue, BW would be an interesting choice. I feel like if anyone is going to get whacked it will be Hawkeye.
I thought I read he might get his own movie at one point. Rumor mill and all that. And of course there is the "no one really stays dead" in the comic universe unless the writers make them do so.

 
interesting that you read all the marvel stuff I won't touch, and I read all the stuff you won't touch... Superior Spider-Man, Spider-Man Team-Up, enjoyed Scarlet Spider and Venom while they were going, superior carnage... basically if it's in the spider-man world I'm reading it... if it's in the Deadpool world I'm reading it... and if it's in the Daredevil world, I might read it... none of which you mentioned.

something for everyone I guess.
Slipped my mind, big list.

I'm loving the current Scarlett Spider as well as Venom. I also left out Young Avengers and New Avengers, both are great. Not gonna lie, was completely unaware of superior carnage.

 
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