I have a couple of additional thoughts. One, when did having something "stick" become the benchmark for telling a good story? Age of Apocalpyse did not technically "stick", but it was considered the best X-Event for more than a decade after it ended. If Aaron tells a good story that last for about a year then that sounds cool to me.
My second thought is Aaron has already introduced us to a Thor that is unworthy of the hammer, Thor from the past. He wouldn't be the first character to swap bodies with his younger/older self for a story arc or two.
Agreed. If what a Big Two superhero reader is most interested in is big, lasting change to the premise, then they are looking in the wrong place. It is just not what these publications tend to do. And doesn't seem to be we ask them to do. But that doesn't mean the short term changes and disruptions can't be fun.
Another example that comes to my mind is Frankencastle. Of COURSE no one thought that would stick. But it was a great, fun, and of course temporary departure from the norm. I would say the same of Captain America becoming the black-suited Captain in the 80s and Super Patriot getting the suit. Even as a kid I knew that wouldn't stick, but it was a fun story to watch play out. And once it was over it became a memorable bit of Cap history, and positioned John Walker to be a more interesting supporting character in the MU.
I don't think "will it stick?" is even a useful metric for these sorts of comics. This is a genre where even death does not stick. Where the CONVENTION is that a dead character will not stay dead. So in that genre I think the metric is not "will it stick?" but rather "will it make for a good story?"
I think the best way to enjoy the endless serial of these comics is to enjoy them in the moment. Be present with the story in front of you, rather than trying to be ahead of it predicting or judging what it will mean to the overall make believe history.
This may be old news by now, but there is a piece of preview art that you can find on the front page of CBR of a bunch of characters featured in the All-New Marvel Now lineup, that shows the new Thor and Angela. So the one will not be the other.
I don't mind the change. It's something different and while those of us who have been reading comics long enough to know that the status quo will most likely be back at some point, it's still an interesting story while it's going on and I'm curious to see how this comes about. I like the images I've seen so far. It looks to be a pretty cool story. Also, I'd like to see how this new Thor interacts with people like Loki, Iron Man and other heroes and villains.
I think I read somewhere that this character's name was Whor, sister of Thor. J/k
Anyone else notice all the big media announcements from marvel have to do with "diversity"? A woman is Thor. A black man is Captain America. Any guesses to what's next? I'm betting another gay superhero. Originally I would've said Hispanic ethnicity for a legacy character, but Marvel surprisingly didn't make a very big deal when they just did that to Ghost Rider (and I'm loving that title right now.)
Any guesses? Maybe the new Iron Fist will be Asian. Or a bisexual Gambit? How about an Arabic Moon Knight? Or a lesbian Storm? A Pakistani Daredevil...? Who knows?
I suppose eventually that the diversity swap or race bending will become a trope of diminishing returns. I like the legacy characters the way they are, but if this is the best way Marvel or DC figures that they have to use this technique to tell good stories... sigh.
I think I read somewhere that this character's name was Whor, sister of Thor. J/k
Anyone else notice all the big media announcements from marvel have to do with "diversity"? A woman is Thor. A black man is Captain America. Any guesses to what's next? I'm betting another gay superhero. Originally I would've said Hispanic ethnicity for a legacy character, but Marvel surprisingly didn't make a very big deal when they just did that to Ghost Rider (and I'm loving that title right now.)
Any guesses? Maybe the new Iron Fist will be Asian. Or a bisexual Gambit? How about an Arabic Moon Knight? Or a lesbian Storm? A Pakistani Daredevil...? Who knows?
I suppose eventually that the diversity swap or race bending will become a trope of diminishing returns. I like the legacy characters the way they are, but if this is the best way Marvel or DC figures that they have to use this technique to tell good stories... sigh.
Oh well. Comics!
Or, better yet, people will stop being interested in only this angle and discuss it as politics rather just seeing new characters being added or mantles changing, things that happen all the time in comics. Nothing new. Not actually news.
What if, someday, a female Thor could be announced, and a decades-old partner of Cap could take on the Cap mantle in the same week and it wouldn't get called an agenda and lead to 'what's next? A (diversity) + (hero name)?!?' posts like this.
I look forward to these character changes not being mainstream news and clickbait anymore, because they will no longer be perceived as only politics, but rather as another story. To be enjoyed or not enjoyed on its merits like anything else.
I suppose eventually that the diversity swap or race bending will become a trope of diminishing returns. I like the legacy characters the way they are, but if this is the best way Marvel or DC figures that they have to use this technique to tell good stories... sigh.
Oh well. Comics!
They've been doing it since the 70's...I mean, replacing the lead character with someone else for a storyline. T
America is more diverse than it used to be, and if kids get a hero they can relate to, why is that a bad thing?
One of my favorite runs in comic history was Don McGregor’s run on Black Panther back in the 70’s. I was a little white kid from rural Illinois, and I was in love with the action, the rich array of characters, and the sense that this was an Important Story. It didn’t matter to me that he was black. I did think it was great that the story took place in Africa, as it was this great mix of tribal politics and super-science.
However, if you’ve read the Black Panther Masterwork, it mattered a LOT to a young Dwayne McDuffie. Finally, he had a hero that was like HIM. There was a strong black man who was a hero, overcame odds and he could identify with. Don McGregor had to put up with a lot of crap on that series, with M arvel editors telling him that there should be more white people in the comic, that it spoke too close to the “black experience” (whatever the hell that meant) and other comments, basically telling h9im to make it more “white.” Don fought with them, and while the series only lasted a few years, think of how many African American comics professionals point to that series and Don in particular as influences that got them interested in comics.
If these new characters can do that for a Hispanic kid, a Asian kid, a girl, etc… Why is that a bad thing? In most cases, it’s just a story with a beginning, middle and end, and the hero we all know will return to retake the mantle. However, for some min or character like Ghost Rider, there’s not enough interest in the character as it was to sustain a series, why not try something new? Maybe it’ll click? Look at the excitement over Batgirl getting a workable costume? I already see a lot of people who aren’t big comics fans saying, “Female Thor? That could be cool!” and I’m able to point them to the Jason Aaron Thor series as one they will already like.
I like having more diverse characters. It leads to more stories. Some of the best stories about The Thing in the last decade have come from the revelation that he was as Jewish as his creators. “The Truth” made a bunch of people mad at the time, but they’ve been proven wrong by how well the series was done, and the stories that have spun out of it. You stated you like the new Ghost Rider. Back in the 60’s, when most of the Marvel Characters were created, heroes were, by and large, pretty bland white guys. I look forward to this new burst of creativity. New characters tend to be rejected by comics fans (the last new character to sustain a series has been Deadpool…who was introduced about 25 years ago), so this can be a way to inject new characters and new blood into super-hero comics.
Looks cool. I like when team books have some unusual members and new blood in the mix, and this definitely has that. Also, as much as I have enjoyed the big cosmic multiple-Earths sort of story Hickman has been telling across his Avengers books since Marvel Now launched, I am also ready for that one to wrap up. So hopefully this new lineup will also be the start of a different story for Hickman or someone else to tell.
So, is that a single team? Two teams? Are they the New Avengers, Avengers, Mighty Avengers, Secret Avengers, Young Avengers, Dark Avengers, West Coast Avengers, Uncanny Avengers or something else?
I love Hickman's books and I love the Avengers as a comic but it's hard to keep track of the line as a whole. I pretty much just stick to Avengers and New so hopefully most of whats going on in that pic will be explained in those two books.
I love Sam Wilson's Captain America costume and am I mistaken or does that dude who looks like Deathlock look a lot like the version from Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.?
Ah. Does he have the same backstory as the dude from the show? I was wondering about the fire dude as well. I really dig this line-up. It seems pretty interesting. The one thing I'm not crazy about it the new Iron Man design. Mostly it's just the color. I like the overall design but it doesn't pop all that much. It looks like it could be some kind of winter armor or something.
I dropped Cap because JRJR made it suck, not because of a Falcon. I may actually pick up the new Cap when this happens. I'm currently reading Thor and will continue - unless it sucks. So yep - no one forces me to buy them, what does that have to do with it?
I don't think I ever said it was a bad thing. I said it was a trope. I like the new Hispanic Ghost Rider and the legacy African T'Challa. Falcon as Cap seems a natural procession, but we've had a black Cap before. We've had several female Thor's before as well. My point is this is becoming more of a gimmick these days because we'e all been taught to seek diversity instead of the median. Hence the hubbub on The View and Colbert. Marvel is just playing the game and I doubt someone figured out they wanted to heavily market these changes AFTER the story was planned out.
So, I'm not the one making it a big deal, the publishers are, I'm just posting an opinion on what is being announced. BleedingCool does the same, and that is their right and their business. I'm just partial to the unheralded changes (like what they've done in Ghost Rider) as opposed to all the fluff and fanfare. All the announced changes are just like spoilers. Let me turn the page and discover it.
However, and as one or two responders here have shown, if I voice any opinion that doesn't completely slobber over the announced changes, I am in the wrong. Whatever. Comic fanboys!
I'm trying to see where I said I was against black, female, or gay characters... Oh yeah, I didn't.
I think it's the tone in which you wrote about it.
Anyone else notice all the big media announcements from marvel have to do with "diversity"?
Any guesses? Maybe the new Iron Fist will be Asian. Or a bisexual Gambit? How about an Arabic Moon Knight? Or a lesbian Storm? A Pakistani Daredevil...? Who knows?
You may not have said diversity was a bad thing, but when you put it in quotes, it comes off as dismissive.
As for your point that we have had these before...I don't see the problem with that. We've seen Spider-Man fight Doc Oc before, but does that mean we don't ever want to see it again? All serialized fiction goes back to the well. That's the nature of it. How many times did Erica Kane get married on All My Children, or Jessica Fletcher have a friend who was murdered in Murder She Wrote, or a madman have a plan to blow up a city in 24?
Sounds to me like you want to go try some independent, creator owned comics! ^_^
I dropped Cap because JRJR made it suck, not because of a Falcon. I may actually pick up the new Cap when this happens. I'm currently reading Thor and will continue - unless it sucks. So yep - no one forces me to buy them, what does that have to do with it?
I don't think I ever said it was a bad thing. I said it was a trope. I like the new Hispanic Ghost Rider and the legacy African T'Challa. Falcon as Cap seems a natural procession, but we've had a black Cap before. We've had several female Thor's before as well. My point is this is becoming more of a gimmick these days because we'e all been taught to seek diversity instead of the median. Hence the hubbub on The View and Colbert. Marvel is just playing the game and I doubt someone figured out they wanted to heavily market these changes AFTER the story was planned out.
So, I'm not the one making it a big deal, the publishers are, I'm just posting an opinion on what is being announced. BleedingCool does the same, and that is their right and their business. I'm just partial to the unheralded changes (like what they've done in Ghost Rider) as opposed to all the fluff and fanfare. All the announced changes are just like spoilers. Let me turn the par and discover it.
However, and as one or two responders here have shown, if I voice any opinion that doesn't completely slobber over the announced changes, I am in the wrong. Whatever. Comic fanboys!
I'm trying to see where I said I was against black, female, or gay characters... Oh yeah, I didn't.
No one said you were wrong or actually said you were against it. As seems to often happen, you want to frame it that way, that we are making judgments and thus are putting the necessary words in mouths to make it that kind of discussion, and have judgments to stand against. I don't see any judgments above, just a different point of view. I am not looking to make this a discussion of what any one person likes or doesn't like.
What I actually said was not that everyone must slobber or be wrong, but actually that I look forward to a time when every announcement of a character outside of the old norms becomes a conversation about a diversity agenda.
I don't like the announcements at all. I think I mostly prefer the surprises to happen when I turn the page or as I'm reading the book instead of all this hype. Another example is the"Death of Wolverine" - another old trope. I'd MUCH rather discover it as I turned the page. I can't be the only one.
Looking forward to seeing who is behind the mask. San Diego can't come soon enough! I'm only sorry I can't make it out this year - I'm going on a trip with the family that's been planned for awhile. I should've consulted the calendar better. :)
LOL - Those were funny jokes, heavy on insensitivity. Is only sensitive joking about fictional characters preferred if you want to make a point? I apologize if you were offended by those. I cannot take credit for either of them. You'd likely have hated Martin & Lewis or Sammy Davis Jr's classic acts.
For what it's worth, my issue is with the spoilery way these changes are rolled out and the point that this is becoming a trope. Not whether I'm against anything but straight white male characters as you've inferred.
I admit that I skipped the sensitivity training course required to talk about comics in the 21st century.
I don't like the announcements at all. I think I mostly prefer the surprises to happen when I turn the page or as I'm reading the book instead of all this hype. Another example is the"Death of Wolverine" - another old trope. I'd MUCH rather discover it as I turned the page. I can't be the only one.
Marvel, and comics as a whole, need to attract more readers than just us. This is especially true when you introducing new characters and books with female leads. These books need all the help they can get in the current marketplace.
As someone who largely started reading comics because I saw a commercial for G.I. Joe comics on television I think it is smart to make these big media announcements.
Comments
Another example that comes to my mind is Frankencastle. Of COURSE no one thought that would stick. But it was a great, fun, and of course temporary departure from the norm. I would say the same of Captain America becoming the black-suited Captain in the 80s and Super Patriot getting the suit. Even as a kid I knew that wouldn't stick, but it was a fun story to watch play out. And once it was over it became a memorable bit of Cap history, and positioned John Walker to be a more interesting supporting character in the MU.
I don't think "will it stick?" is even a useful metric for these sorts of comics. This is a genre where even death does not stick. Where the CONVENTION is that a dead character will not stay dead. So in that genre I think the metric is not "will it stick?" but rather "will it make for a good story?"
I think the best way to enjoy the endless serial of these comics is to enjoy them in the moment. Be present with the story in front of you, rather than trying to be ahead of it predicting or judging what it will mean to the overall make believe history.
Fun > Important
At least to me.
I think this could work.
Anyone else notice all the big media announcements from marvel have to do with "diversity"? A woman is Thor. A black man is Captain America. Any guesses to what's next? I'm betting another gay superhero. Originally I would've said Hispanic ethnicity for a legacy character, but Marvel surprisingly didn't make a very big deal when they just did that to Ghost Rider (and I'm loving that title right now.)
Any guesses? Maybe the new Iron Fist will be Asian. Or a bisexual Gambit? How about an Arabic Moon Knight? Or a lesbian Storm? A Pakistani Daredevil...? Who knows?
I suppose eventually that the diversity swap or race bending will become a trope of diminishing returns. I like the legacy characters the way they are, but if this is the best way Marvel or DC figures that they have to use this technique to tell good stories... sigh.
Oh well. Comics!
What if, someday, a female Thor could be announced, and a decades-old partner of Cap could take on the Cap mantle in the same week and it wouldn't get called an agenda and lead to 'what's next? A (diversity) + (hero name)?!?' posts like this.
I look forward to these character changes not being mainstream news and clickbait anymore, because they will no longer be perceived as only politics, but rather as another story. To be enjoyed or not enjoyed on its merits like anything else.
Looks interesting.
America is more diverse than it used to be, and if kids get a hero they can relate to, why is that a bad thing?
One of my favorite runs in comic history was Don McGregor’s run on Black Panther back in the 70’s. I was a little white kid from rural Illinois, and I was in love with the action, the rich array of characters, and the sense that this was an Important Story. It didn’t matter to me that he was black. I did think it was great that the story took place in Africa, as it was this great mix of tribal politics and super-science.
However, if you’ve read the Black Panther Masterwork, it mattered a LOT to a young Dwayne McDuffie. Finally, he had a hero that was like HIM. There was a strong black man who was a hero, overcame odds and he could identify with. Don McGregor had to put up with a lot of crap on that series, with M arvel editors telling him that there should be more white people in the comic, that it spoke too close to the “black experience” (whatever the hell that meant) and other comments, basically telling h9im to make it more “white.” Don fought with them, and while the series only lasted a few years, think of how many African American comics professionals point to that series and Don in particular as influences that got them interested in comics.
If these new characters can do that for a Hispanic kid, a Asian kid, a girl, etc… Why is that a bad thing? In most cases, it’s just a story with a beginning, middle and end, and the hero we all know will return to retake the mantle. However, for some min or character like Ghost Rider, there’s not enough interest in the character as it was to sustain a series, why not try something new? Maybe it’ll click? Look at the excitement over Batgirl getting a workable costume? I already see a lot of people who aren’t big comics fans saying, “Female Thor? That could be cool!” and I’m able to point them to the Jason Aaron Thor series as one they will already like.
I like having more diverse characters. It leads to more stories. Some of the best stories about The Thing in the last decade have come from the revelation that he was as Jewish as his creators. “The Truth” made a bunch of people mad at the time, but they’ve been proven wrong by how well the series was done, and the stories that have spun out of it. You stated you like the new Ghost Rider. Back in the 60’s, when most of the Marvel Characters were created, heroes were, by and large, pretty bland white guys. I look forward to this new burst of creativity. New characters tend to be rejected by comics fans (the last new character to sustain a series has been Deadpool…who was introduced about 25 years ago), so this can be a way to inject new characters and new blood into super-hero comics.
I love Hickman's books and I love the Avengers as a comic but it's hard to keep track of the line as a whole. I pretty much just stick to Avengers and New so hopefully most of whats going on in that pic will be explained in those two books.
I don't think I ever said it was a bad thing. I said it was a trope. I like the new Hispanic Ghost Rider and the legacy African T'Challa. Falcon as Cap seems a natural procession, but we've had a black Cap before. We've had several female Thor's before as well. My point is this is becoming more of a gimmick these days because we'e all been taught to seek diversity instead of the median. Hence the hubbub on The View and Colbert. Marvel is just playing the game and I doubt someone figured out they wanted to heavily market these changes AFTER the story was planned out.
So, I'm not the one making it a big deal, the publishers are, I'm just posting an opinion on what is being announced. BleedingCool does the same, and that is their right and their business. I'm just partial to the unheralded changes (like what they've done in Ghost Rider) as opposed to all the fluff and fanfare. All the announced changes are just like spoilers. Let me turn the page and discover it.
However, and as one or two responders here have shown, if I voice any opinion that doesn't completely slobber over the announced changes, I am in the wrong. Whatever. Comic fanboys!
I'm trying to see where I said I was against black, female, or gay characters... Oh yeah, I didn't.
Anyone else notice all the big media announcements from marvel have to do with "diversity"?
Any guesses? Maybe the new Iron Fist will be Asian. Or a bisexual Gambit? How about an Arabic Moon Knight? Or a lesbian Storm? A Pakistani Daredevil...? Who knows?
You may not have said diversity was a bad thing, but when you put it in quotes, it comes off as dismissive.
As for your point that we have had these before...I don't see the problem with that. We've seen Spider-Man fight Doc Oc before, but does that mean we don't ever want to see it again? All serialized fiction goes back to the well. That's the nature of it. How many times did Erica Kane get married on All My Children, or Jessica Fletcher have a friend who was murdered in Murder She Wrote, or a madman have a plan to blow up a city in 24?
Sounds to me like you want to go try some independent, creator owned comics! ^_^
What I actually said was not that everyone must slobber or be wrong, but actually that I look forward to a time when every announcement of a character outside of the old norms becomes a conversation about a diversity agenda.
To the other "conversation" I'll just add this: Maybe this doesn't really help your case much? :) Those are insensitive comments and it feels like the "j/k" is an excuse to make them. Doesn't really add much.
Okay - back to the guesses! Who is the new Thor?
For what it's worth, my issue is with the spoilery way these changes are rolled out and the point that this is becoming a trope. Not whether I'm against anything but straight white male characters as you've inferred.
I admit that I skipped the sensitivity training course required to talk about comics in the 21st century.
Looks Great!
Totally excited for:
Medusa
Ant-Man
New Deathlok
Doc Strange
New Inhumans guy
Not at all excited for;
Angela
Girl Thor
As someone who largely started reading comics because I saw a commercial for G.I. Joe comics on television I think it is smart to make these big media announcements.