pickA fascinating look at the endlessly renewing, creative, flawed entity that is Marvel comics.
Howe does a great job of moving the historical account from its first moments, through the decades, hitting on pivotal people, creations and events, offering a lot of context with details of the comic book industry throughout the years, and the company's restructuring along that path, how Marvel shaped and was shaped, 1/?
Okay but Vengeance, Incorporated is amazing
Isn't it nice that the fans were responding favourably to the chemically enhanced creativity by supplying the artists with more mind-altering substances? 🙃🧪
Was this by any chance an LSD or mushroom-induced trance, Steve?! 😵💫🍄
“ritualistic discharge“ is going to stick with me.
pickIn this mini-series, comics veteran Louise Simonson takes us on a whirlwind tour of Jean Grey's most pivotal decisions. What if Jean had acted differently? This was really fun and you can read it even if you aren't caught up on X-Men.
so-soI love almost everything by Kieron Gillen, but this volume of Immortal X-Men is badly hampered by the need for lots of exposition explaining stuff from Sins of Sinister. Also, Mother Righteous is a terrible charactet. I did like the scenes between Sinister and Xavier.
so-soIt's not a terrible idea to stitch together the prequels with the sequels by sending Vader to Exegol, but there's nothing particularly interesting about this story. The art is equally meh.
so-soThe DEFENDERS have always been the STAR TREK to the AVENGERS‘ STAR WARS. Meaning, less bombastic and more weird and thoughtful. Led by Dr. Strange, a group of mystical misfits must delve deep into the pre-cosmos to counter a threat to existence itself! Bizarre in a good way, but not as great as other tales from this team I‘ve read in the past.
I appreciate the honesty inherent in acknowledging the 'he said, she said, they said' when speaking of the early years, filtered through acrimony, law suits, careers that went awry. Also the ongoing attention paid to the tension between artists and writers looking for fulfilling, creative work over which they retained creative control and maybe even ownership, which could be 5d
It's no secret at this point that the artists, for decades, and even to this day, struggle to retain ownership of their work, even creative control, but it turns out the reality is even messier, 5d
What I 'Marvel' at is honestly how the company stayed in business long enough to become an IP farm for 5d
Howe doesn't hesitate to lay out the dirty laundry in the text and the footnotes, but it doesn't feel salacious, rather that it is trying to honour the fact that amongst groundbreaking imagination and epic highs and lows of productivity, commercial success and critical acclaim, there was a constantly disorganized or constantly reorganized hierarchy trying to stay one step ahead of eternally toxic office politics and owner 5d
Aside from the truly wild moments excerpted from the psychedelic 60s, stoned 70s, and coked out 80s, what truly amused me were the times when Howe went direct to reader with the shade, no disgruntled intermediary required. There are evidently comic book moments known as just plain bad, and he does not hold back. 💅🏼
5d
Now I really, really want to read a history of DC comics. 5d