I didn't take the Morlocks as a metaphor on superpower as disability. I took them as a third option one can take when being oppressed. Stan Lee had already established 2 ways it can go: Magneto chooses to fight and try to take over; the X-Men choose to fight but strive towards uniting with humans.
But the Morlocks choose to completely give up, opt out and isolate themselves. Claremont clearly believes one should stay and fight to be treated fairly however. At one point, Callisto asks Nightcrawler who is similarly unconventional looking to join them. His response? "I won't desert my friends. More importantly, I've spent my whole life fighting to be accepted as I am. To be judged by my deeds instead of my looks. I won't leave that battle before it's done". To me, that sounds like a pretty wonderful message for him to be instilling in young/teen readers.
IMO Claremont does a great job of writing those first Morlock stories (and I'm fortunate enough to have the trade and I just re-read them) where he gives the Morlocks a very good reason to want to isolate themselves. A lesser writer would just paint them as evil, but he doesn't. You get a sense of why they're angry and he wrings plenty of sympathy out of Caliban, who is also a Morlock who chooses to isolate himself, but he's not violent.
I think Claremont's writing here is exceptional since he is both simultaneously explaining why the Morlocks do what they do, but he's not losing sight of the fact that those aren't good enough reasons to hurt others. He (or Storm) calls them out on their bs. They can choose to stay opt out and stay underground but their experiences are no excuses for hurting others.
Claremont gets a little more complex with this idea as well: while Callisto and the Morlocks hate all the "pretty" X-Men and above ground dwellers, Callisto has also kidnapped Angel and is going to marry him simply because he is "the most beautiful man in all the world". There's obviously an element of jealousy for Callisto in this too. She claims to hate that which she desires most. Certain readers might crap all over this as cheap pop psychology, but most "insights" into how weird humans can be in a general sense qualifies as cheap pop psychology since many psychological concepts and ideas went mainstream. Psychology isn't much of a science, never mind rocket science, although some may wish to argue otherwise. (And I say this as someone who was a sociotherapist for 2 years.) More to the point: at the time Claremont's writing was well ahead of most superhero writers in terms of characterization.
I think there's a very good reason Claremont managed to turn the X-Men from underselling into Marvel's best-selling comic/comics and the above is some of them.
I'm not exactly sure what kind of insights you wanted me to draw from that link you sent me. The writer seems to have a complaint that Claremont didn't write a story (way back in the early 80's) that didn't end in a way he presumably wants any story with a lesbian subtext to end: with the implicit message that lesbians - even the ones who are vampires - are amazing.
He notes: "After all, as writer of the X-Men he was all about hammering home how we should be open and tolerant towards alternative lifestyles". Yes, exactly. I don't agree with people who criticize others - especially writers of 30+ year old works - for not being PC enough.
As to Claremont writing too many mind control stories: okay. I wouldn't argue that Claremont did not repeat himself. He certainly did. But he also wrote a ton of stories.
I was unaware of these fetish characters from Excalibur, so thanks for the heads up. I guess he also has a fetish. I thought it might have just been Byrne but you convinced me.
I disagree completely that Claremont set kids up with all these weird sexual "hang-ups" they'd take into adulthood. Although to be fair, I'd be curious to know what constitutes a sexual "hang-up" to you? Do you consider Claremont's fetishes a "sexual hang-up"? There was a time when anything on the LGBTQ spectrum was considered a "sexual hang-up". Would you ever suggest that a lesbian became a lesbian because of the comics she read?
I think what Claremont (and Lee and others) did with Professor X was a result of trying to keep the most powerful mind-controller on earth from instantly stopping any fight instantly with his mind if he wanted to, not a result of a lack of humanity on any of their parts. I seem to recall Claremont saying as much in an interview. Professor X's abilities made him the kind of character that's difficult to keep making excuses for as to why he's not just halting every fight before it starts.
Re: Claremont's humanity or possible lack of it: in the very same storyline that he introduces the Morlocks he notes that Callisto looks at Angel in the same way a man once looked at her when she was 12: "a prize to be won, an object to be possessed. My emotions, my wishes, meant nothing". IMO Claremont was writing #MeToo 30-plus years ago.
Brack, I apologize if my last post was unclear or I sounded curt. I was in a rush to finish it and make a phone call. I meant to write that it was Storm that noted that Callisto looks at Angel in the same way a man once looked at her when she was 12. "a prize to be won, an object to be possessed. My emotions, my wishes, meant nothing". That was what I meant by Claremont was writing #Me Too 30 plus years ago.
I disagree completely that Claremont set kids up with all these weird sexual "hang-ups" they'd take into adulthood. Although to be fair, I'd be curious to know what constitutes a sexual "hang-up" to you? Do you consider Claremont's fetishes a "sexual hang-up"? There was a time when anything on the LGBTQ spectrum was considered a "sexual hang-up". Would you ever suggest that a lesbian became a lesbian because of the comics she read?
It's more the fact they are presented via innuendo and subtext (most likely due to Shooter rather than Claremont) than spoken outright - which is why the subliminal SEX issue of Morrison's X-Men feels like a reference to that.
That said, Claremont doesn't get off scot-free. That Excalibur story I mentioned is part of a longer arc where Kitty is being groomed by Sat-Yr-9. (This was not the first time Claremont has written Kitty getting groomed - see also X-Men vs. The Micronauts where she's groomed by... Professor X)
And I can't recall his mind control obsession ever being portrayed as consensual, nor any of the times people are put on leads. His body transformation obsession seems to mainly be evil people forcing it on others or doing it to themselves (exception: Meggan in Excalibur, but that was often her power acting under the influence of outside stimulus, again no free will). I don't recall any of his gender switching characters being heroes (cf. Cloud in Defenders).
At the time I didn't care, but going back and filling in gaps in my reading as an adult, I started to think "I'm glad I read this as a teenager, but there's definitely patterns to his themes, some of which sit uneasily now I'm an adult".
And back to the Morlocks - Masque is clearly the "EVIL CRIPPLE" cliche when first introduced. Probably didn't bother me as a child, but growing up with my own disability and encountering it so often, I absolutely hate it now. Though M Night Shyamalan is more to blame there than Claremont - Unbreakable was the straw that broke the camel's back on that front.
I'm only singling out Claremont, because I think Morrison was deliberately invoking him - but he had plenty of peers indulging in the same thing. And arguably not as well.
Brack, I wasn't aware that there was such a thing as an "evil cripple" cliché until you said it just now so thanks. I don't know what it's like to see disabled characters through your (or anyone else's) experiences but I do have to say that despite apparently having been exposed to this cliche all my life, whenever I think of people in wheelchairs (or disabled in any way) I never in a million years think of them as "evil" or any worse than the average person. I don't know if this is because there's an equivalent number of disabled characters throughout the decades who were good people (surely the sympathetic disabled person is just as common?) or because the cliche can't compete with the influences of real life.
I'm not suggesting that you're suggesting that people see these clichés and suddenly that's their image of all disabled persons, but I do think that the power of these clichés to shape children can be - and is, especially these days - regularly overstated. (I'm not saying that they wouldn't offend you. I can understand why they might.) You seem to (and I might be mistaken) have a problem with the fact that Claremont's pattern is making mind control "non-consensual". You write that he's not "off the hook". Is there some danger posed by his writing?
I ask this because I don't fall in line with some of the current ideas about males taking their cues on how to interact with women from fiction or porn for that matter. There was an article in the NY Times magazine about the effect of porn on young males and it tried to present it as harmful, but the fact was that most of the guys in the article only claimed that it created some confusion to them. Of course this was enough to build an article around and allege that young males get their ideas of sex from porn which is simply not true.
When I was a teen I watched porn as secretly as the next guy and I never in a million years thought that it represented what actual sex was supposed to be like. Same for movies like Porky's. Simply because I existed in the real world and saw that there was nothing about porn that mimicked real life. When people want to pin the blame for people like Weinstein on a "rape culture" I don't buy it for a second. In order to believe there's a "rape culture" you have to ignore every thing in society (and there's always been since at least the 80's) that portrays forcing people to do things against their will as very negative. (Claremont even made it a point to have his good character Prof X be reluctant to control someone else's mind. How does subtext trump overt messages?)
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the only way one can blame Claremont for anything resembling a sexual "hang-up" or less-than-chivalrous attitudes towards women (which is the impression I'm getting you have of him) is if they lived inside a room where the only thing they were exposed to was Claremont books. And even then the argument doesn't hold water for me because Claremont women were very strong and there were overt messages of what healthy relationships looked like.
BTW, I'm no Claremont apologist here. If someone wants to criticize him for repeating himself or using too many clichés, I'm on board. It's the idea that somehow his writing is to blame for shaping children to have less than positive attitudes towards women or sex that I disagree with. I believe the origins of fetishes/what turns a person on, just like lesbianism or being gay, are enough of a mystery that we may as well just say that fetishists were born that way. Trying to figure out the actual roots of a fetish is like trying to interpret dreams - another once popular psychological exercise that over time proved to be something no serious psychiatrist or psychologist would want to read too much into. For the great majority of people a cigar really is just a cigar. For some it's a turn on from the age of 12 on - who knows why.
I guess I'm saying in my usual long winded way that some guys were going to be turned on by dominatrixes and some weren't -- well before they read Claremont's Xmen. Some guys got turned on by his comics and other guys just thought they were reading about super villains.
Are we sure Scott Snyder is still a good writer? What's the last thing he wrote that blew you away?
I had the same feeling reading these issues that I had with Metal; mostly that I didn't know what the heck was going on. I'm going to give them a reread to try and understand better, but in general I don't want to have to reread comics to enjoy them. I thought the Bryan Hitch era was overly simplistic; they've gone in the complete opposite direction now. But I don't think it's much better.
First two issues of Valiant High - I'm getting these only courtesy of the DCBS bundle, but on the months where there's something like this AND Quantum and Woody, it's not feeling like a deal.
Mphil, I share your view on Snyder. After the first Court of Owls storyline the only thing I found interesting about his Batman run was Capullo's artwork. I don't think he's a bad writer, but nor do I understand the fuss.
I just finished the first issue of the new Britannia mini from Valiant - and I have to say, I definitely missed the artwork of Juan Jose Ryp. Not that Robert Gill’s art is bad... but I don’t like it as much here as I did Ryp’s.
Picked up Jessica Jones a while back from a sale on comiXology. I just read vol. 1 and getting ready for vol. 2. First volume was "meh." It feels like Bendis was going for a bigger story and I can't help but feel that bigger story was some kind of tie-in to the Secret Empire storyline (of which I wasn't overwhelmed with either).
After catching up on Peter David's recent Scarlet Spider revival, I've noticed something that may be an unintended consequence of the big events. Unless you have read the event title or know what's happening, the subplot in the ancillary books almost cripples the momentum of the actual plot. I'm left too busy wondering when and how this all fits in and why this stuff matters to the overall story. Instead of the information being part of the setting and living in that space, the creative team just leaves it hanging. There are no editor's notes that clue the reader in as to what book to read to get that missing information. While it may be a slight nitpick, I think it's one that, decades from now may make a mediocre book unreadable. Anyone else notice this kind of stuff when you finally get to reading something months after it was published?
For an example of how it can be done right, I've been slowly making my way through Mark Waid's The Flash TPBs, taking sips here and there like a fine wine. I don't think there was anything going on event-wise at the time it was originally published--at least not in the Flash world--but if there was, I can't tell. And those stories are almost 30 years old!
Picked up Jessica Jones a while back from a sale on comiXology. I just read vol. 1 and getting ready for vol. 2. First volume was "meh." It feels like Bendis was going for a bigger story and I can't help but feel that bigger story was some kind of tie-in to the Secret Empire storyline (of which I wasn't overwhelmed with either).
After catching up on Peter David's recent Scarlet Spider revival, I've noticed something that may be an unintended consequence of the big events. Unless you have read the event title or know what's happening, the subplot in the ancillary books almost cripples the momentum of the actual plot. I'm left too busy wondering when and how this all fits in and why this stuff matters to the overall story. Instead of the information being part of the setting and living in that space, the creative team just leaves it hanging. There are no editor's notes that clue the reader in as to what book to read to get that missing information. While it may be a slight nitpick, I think it's one that, decades from now may make a mediocre book unreadable. Anyone else notice this kind of stuff when you finally get to reading something months after it was published?
For an example of how it can be done right, I've been slowly making my way through Mark Waid's The Flash TPBs, taking sips here and there like a fine wine. I don't think there was anything going on event-wise at the time it was originally published--at least not in the Flash world--but if there was, I can't tell. And those stories are almost 30 years old!
I think part of it is poor event control under Alonso. I'm guessing PAD had no idea the plot of Secret Empire when writing the issues of Scarlet Spider that came out during Secret Empire, because it directly contradicted events in that comic.
Likewise, I doubt Spencer knew Las Vegas was an intrinsic part of an ongoing comic when he blew it up. Which led to Scarlet Spider not addressing it until Secret Empire was p. much done and the Damnation cross-over was written to undo it.
Part of the problem is Secret Empire was an event that felt editorially mandated, and not the correct end of the story that it ended up ending. Shadowland was where first noticed this happening, a story that should have been told slower in Daredevil, gets blown up into an event that pleases neither the readers who'd followed the story nor people picking it because it's the big Marvel event this month.
Not only do these events cause problems in other comics, they feel alien to the comics their writers produced to theoretically get to this event.
While continuity shouldn't be a crutch, things like this actively discourage from reading lots of the line as you have to deal with this sort of cognitive dissonance.
Compare that to Hickman's Secret Wars, where you feel rewarded the more of his runs you read leading into the final event. Though that had it's own problem where Bendis was so slow on X-Men, it references an event in the X-books he never got around to writing before he left.
On the other side of my Batman catch-up reading. the final two parts of "Super Friends" felt too over the top.
MILD SPOILERS follow in case that is a concern--
I thought the story was fun, and it is not that it was poorly executed. I just have a pet peeve of this sub-genre of stories that throw the characters into another place where time moves differently, and then we are supposed to believe that, in this case, Bruce and Diana were basically sword and sandal warriors doing level after level of horde mode for, like DECADES of time. And then they return, having only been away for a few days or our time or something.
It's just too over the top. I mean, I know it is all make believe. But given how much King's writing often deals with the idea of trauma, and what the weight of experience still carries with you, it feels too over the top (maybe Silver Age-y) of an ask for him to have something of this scale happen, and then the characters who experienced aren't fundamentally changed. It just doesn't feel consistent with the other ways he writes Bruce, and what Bruce's relationship to history, experience, and trauma are. I didn't buy it.
I feel like if he and Jones wanted to tell the story of, basically, 'Bruce went off and did this intense thing, alone with Diana, for a LONG TIME, and still stayed faithful to Selina, then that could have worked if it was even if they experienced what felt like a month, or a year. But for it to have been decades just makes the whole thing silly. Oh well.
I've been enjoying Charles Soule's Daredevil once it got past its slow first arc, and this problem I have with the latest issue isn't really Soule's fault, it's one of editors not communicating.
But it does end on a story beat that we just saw in Amazing Spider-Man #2 mere weeks ago...
Black Lighting/Hong Kong Phooey Special - the main story was a definite borrow minus. The art was a little hard to follow and the story was a cheap American Kung Fu knockoff. It wasn't fun or great; borrow it if you want to read a 70s Kung Fu story featuring Hong Kong Phooey. The backup was Funky Phantom. Boy this was a heavy handed preachy mess about gun control. It was not good.
Batman 52. (SPOILERS) Although I love the Lee Weeks art, this storyline is just getting worse and worse for me. King seems to be heading towards a finish line where Batman getting dumped results in him becoming extra violent and torturing criminals (in addition to destruction of public property). I don't see it.
I get the impression King (who I usually love) seems to be taking the stages of grief a little too literally. It's one thing to become angry over Jason Todd being killed and want revenge. but over being dumped? This is a man who has repeatedly stopped himself from letting the Joker die (even if it's not by his hands) despite the uncountable number of murders that continue to accrue as a result of his mind-boggling level of self-control.
I enjoy flawed heroes but I also expect them to be better than an everyday hothead who gets so angry over being dumped that he feels the need to punch something/ vandalize a public bathroom. I'm not trying to equate the two but IMO getting this angry over rejection/things not going your way seems like it belongs in the realm of domestic violence or a child's temper tantrum. And I know Batman is stunted, but he's been around the block a few times when it comes to relationships. If I'm supposed to think "Well he never truly loved anyone before" - I'm rolling my eyes.
Immortal Men. I'm 3 issues in and having all kinds of early Image flashbacks - even the character names - The Kill, Reload, Timber, Stray, Ghost Fist, Stray, The Hunt. Some of the character concepts seem interesting, but every time they make a reference to the DC universe, it feels jarring.
I had intended to stick with Thor through the war if the realms, but I think I'm going to bail. I don't like the push towards a more Ragnarockish tone. Del Mundo's art is hard for me to follow. Thori the murder dog was funny, but is wearing thin on me. And, at the end of the day, what is really going to change with the character? Thor will be worthy. Moew moew will probably be reassembled. There will be a new Asgard. What will really be different at the end of the war.
I had intended to stick with Thor through the war if the realms, but I think I'm going to bail. I don't like the push towards a more Ragnarockish tone. Del Mundo's art is hard for me to follow. Thori the murder dog was funny, but is wearing thin on me. And, at the end of the day, what is really going to change with the character? Thor will be worthy. Moew moew will probably be reassembled. There will be a new Asgard. What will really be different at the end of the war.
Del Mundo isn’t drawing the next arc if that makes any difference.
I liked his JLA run, but beyond that, I feel like Morrison writes for himself. Especially when he disregards stuff to write his story.
The only thing I found more irritating then his run on Batman was when people told me it was the best Batman they’ve ever read. Then advised they didn’t read Batman beforehand. That implies they’re a Morrison fan, not a Batman fan. Although I recognize everyone to have an opinion (even if I don’t agree with it), I just assess the amount of value to it.
I, too, loved his JLA run. Pure genius, in a contained, focused, appropriate way. Awesome super-hero stories.
I've been struggling with the Metal Men hardcover... the series by Duncan Rouleau... which came out originally post 52/Countdown...
Man, I love the Metal Men, and this version is .... something. The storytelling constantly jumps back and forth in time, and is very confusing. Not sure I will make it through.
Punisher #1 Between this and the Madrox series, I think I've had it confirmed that Matthew Rosenberg comics are too dialogue heavy for my taste. They both have good ideas - here the idea is Frank Castle vs. the Bond villain style mastermind villains of the Marvel Universe. And it's played well as the Punisher is just the silent force of nature rather than a character.
But everyone else just doesn't shut up, leading to some speech bubbles that are just a dense wall of text.
The heavily photo-referenced Alex Maleev-esque art is hard going too. Particularly when there's not enough references and you get the Mandarin holding the same goofy expression over three panels.
I just read Justice League #6 and #7 and they didn't work for me. I really haven't been enjoying Snyder's run on JL. I didn't like Metal too much either. In fact, I can't remember the last time I really enjoyed a Scott Snyder book (Court of Owls maybe?).
I think he's a good writer, there's just something about the way he writes that I've had trouble articulating. But after finishing this JL arc I feel like I understand it better. I have to be honest, I can't really tell you what happened in this arc. I sort of know, but I found my mind drifting with boredom often.
I think the thing I don't like about Snyder's recent work is that he tries to fit too much story into one... story. There's always so many parallel storylines, which sort of fit together, but he doesn't really reveal anything until the very end. So while reading it, it just feels like a disjointed mess. To me anyways.
Batman the Damned #1 which I picked up solely for the artwork (and the very reasonable cover price at $6.99 - I can easily imagine Marvel charging at least $9.99 for this oversized display of such amazing artwork). So, the artwork was nothing short of glorious but I hoped the story would at least be decent. IMO it wasn't.
By the way it's worth pointing out that I picked this up on the day it came out before I even became aware of the penis brouhaha. It's also worth noting that I never even noticed the penis, partially bc I was reading it less and less closely as I was slowly realizing that there's next to no story here, just a gimmicky reveal about Bruce's father which is presumably shocking bc it goes against every single thing we've ever known about the character. (It seems like lazy writing to me. Hey, guess what! Did you know Jor-El ran a sex slave ring on Krypton!? "Gripping!" "Changes everything you ever knew about the Superman mythos!")
The rest of the story was a question about whether or not Bats killed the Joker. First, who cares? This is an imaginary non-canon story. But to be fair: was there anything else here to make me care enough to keep reading for the answer? Not unless you count John Constantine offering up a narration on what it means to be human that amounts to literally nothing more than "Life sux and then you die"" and "Ain't a religion a crock?" It's all very sophomoric.
I'm not religious at all and I'm not the kind of person to be offended by religious based imagery, but the last page is the perfect example of the enormous double standard Christians are subjected to in this country. If this were any other religion that last panel would've never in a million years been allowed in something as mainstream as a Batman comic (Black Label or not).
This issue reminded me of Alan Moore's observations that many writers got the wrong lessons from Watchmen. This is "mature" like college students in armchair philosopher mode who think they're saying something profound when they realize people lie and can't always be trusted. (No offense to college students. I was one myself.)
I liked The Damned well enough to keep reading. I agree that there's not a lot of meat on the bone in this first issue. I did like they way Azzarello was able to fit in Constantine and Deadman in a way that, to me, felt natural. It's amazing how most Batman writers seem to forget there's a whole world of DC characters to play with and it doesn't just have to be the regular old Bat characters.
As far as the nudity, I bought the Comixology version which apparently edited that out. Seems like a strange choice, perhaps because comixology doesn't have any sort of parental controls built in?
I'm not a fan of Azzarello’s work, so I had no interest in picking it up. I did flip through a copy at the shop to look at the artwork, and I didn't much care for it. The penciling and storytelling seemed fine just glancing over it, but the coloring was a bit too monotonous. Maybe there's a storytelling reason for it, but felt like I was looking at screen captures from cutscenes of a video game.
Shazam #1 - The story was fine, but the art style just didn't work for me. I don't think a "DC house style" is the right choice for a Captain Marvel comic. Please give me a little bit of whimsy.
Superior Spider-Man #1 - Gage isn't quite writing to Hawthorne's strengths here which is action and comedy.
When Otto/Elliot is under the mask fighting Stiltman or teaming with The Night Shift to battle Master Pandemonium's cult the comic sings. The use of Digger here is perfect for Hawthorne.
When it's 6 pages of Otto arguing with Anna, it grinds to a halt. Though the story beat of Anna figuring out Otto's identity straight away is the smart one.
It wasn't bad, but this book is an example of bad Morrison. It slow with no action and leaned very heavily in on Marston's personal beliefs and creation of Wonder woman (all with the Morrison wink/nudge). I love Grant, but this was a flop that I had high hopes for
Mwhitt80, I could not agree more on the writing especially since I had hopes that he would incorporate Marston's fetishes in a far more pronounced way and at least deliver something genuinely offbeat and interesting. At this point I doubt I'll ever read a great WW story. I've tried the acclaimed runs by Rucka, Perez, Simone and no luck. In an alternate reality it'd be great to see what Alan Moore could do.
Comments
I didn't take the Morlocks as a metaphor on superpower as disability. I took them as a third option one can take when being oppressed. Stan Lee had already established 2 ways it can go: Magneto chooses to fight and try to take over; the X-Men choose to fight but strive towards uniting with humans.
But the Morlocks choose to completely give up, opt out and isolate themselves. Claremont clearly believes one should stay and fight to be treated fairly however. At one point, Callisto asks Nightcrawler who is similarly unconventional looking to join them. His response? "I won't desert my friends. More importantly, I've spent my whole life fighting to be accepted as I am. To be judged by my deeds instead of my looks. I won't leave that battle before it's done". To me, that sounds like a pretty wonderful message for him to be instilling in young/teen readers.
IMO Claremont does a great job of writing those first Morlock stories (and I'm fortunate enough to have the trade and I just re-read them) where he gives the Morlocks a very good reason to want to isolate themselves. A lesser writer would just paint them as evil, but he doesn't. You get a sense of why they're angry and he wrings plenty of sympathy out of Caliban, who is also a Morlock who chooses to isolate himself, but he's not violent.
I think Claremont's writing here is exceptional since he is both simultaneously explaining why the Morlocks do what they do, but he's not losing sight of the fact that those aren't good enough reasons to hurt others. He (or Storm) calls them out on their bs. They can choose to stay opt out and stay underground but their experiences are no excuses for hurting others.
Claremont gets a little more complex with this idea as well: while Callisto and the Morlocks hate all the "pretty" X-Men and above ground dwellers, Callisto has also kidnapped Angel and is going to marry him simply because he is "the most beautiful man in all the world". There's obviously an element of jealousy for Callisto in this too. She claims to hate that which she desires most. Certain readers might crap all over this as cheap pop psychology, but most "insights" into how weird humans can be in a general sense qualifies as cheap pop psychology since many psychological concepts and ideas went mainstream. Psychology isn't much of a science, never mind rocket science, although some may wish to argue otherwise. (And I say this as someone who was a sociotherapist for 2 years.) More to the point: at the time Claremont's writing was well ahead of most superhero writers in terms of characterization.
I think there's a very good reason Claremont managed to turn the X-Men from underselling into Marvel's best-selling comic/comics and the above is some of them.
I'm not exactly sure what kind of insights you wanted me to draw from that link you sent me. The writer seems to have a complaint that Claremont didn't write a story (way back in the early 80's) that didn't end in a way he presumably wants any story with a lesbian subtext to end: with the implicit message that lesbians - even the ones who are vampires - are amazing.
He notes: "After all, as writer of the X-Men he was all about hammering home how we should be open and tolerant towards alternative lifestyles". Yes, exactly. I don't agree with people who criticize others - especially writers of 30+ year old works - for not being PC enough.
As to Claremont writing too many mind control stories: okay. I wouldn't argue that Claremont did not repeat himself. He certainly did. But he also wrote a ton of stories.
I was unaware of these fetish characters from Excalibur, so thanks for the heads up. I guess he also has a fetish. I thought it might have just been Byrne but you convinced me.
I disagree completely that Claremont set kids up with all these weird sexual "hang-ups" they'd take into adulthood. Although to be fair, I'd be curious to know what constitutes a sexual "hang-up" to you? Do you consider Claremont's fetishes a "sexual hang-up"? There was a time when anything on the LGBTQ spectrum was considered a "sexual hang-up". Would you ever suggest that a lesbian became a lesbian because of the comics she read?
I think what Claremont (and Lee and others) did with Professor X was a result of trying to keep the most powerful mind-controller on earth from instantly stopping any fight instantly with his mind if he wanted to, not a result of a lack of humanity on any of their parts. I seem to recall Claremont saying as much in an interview. Professor X's abilities made him the kind of character that's difficult to keep making excuses for as to why he's not just halting every fight before it starts.
Re: Claremont's humanity or possible lack of it: in the very same storyline that he introduces the Morlocks he notes that Callisto looks at Angel in the same way a man once looked at her when she was 12: "a prize to be won, an object to be possessed. My emotions, my wishes, meant nothing". IMO Claremont was writing #MeToo 30-plus years ago.
That said, Claremont doesn't get off scot-free. That Excalibur story I mentioned is part of a longer arc where Kitty is being groomed by Sat-Yr-9. (This was not the first time Claremont has written Kitty getting groomed - see also X-Men vs. The Micronauts where she's groomed by... Professor X)
And I can't recall his mind control obsession ever being portrayed as consensual, nor any of the times people are put on leads. His body transformation obsession seems to mainly be evil people forcing it on others or doing it to themselves (exception: Meggan in Excalibur, but that was often her power acting under the influence of outside stimulus, again no free will). I don't recall any of his gender switching characters being heroes (cf. Cloud in Defenders).
At the time I didn't care, but going back and filling in gaps in my reading as an adult, I started to think "I'm glad I read this as a teenager, but there's definitely patterns to his themes, some of which sit uneasily now I'm an adult".
And back to the Morlocks - Masque is clearly the "EVIL CRIPPLE" cliche when first introduced. Probably didn't bother me as a child, but growing up with my own disability and encountering it so often, I absolutely hate it now. Though M Night Shyamalan is more to blame there than Claremont - Unbreakable was the straw that broke the camel's back on that front.
I'm only singling out Claremont, because I think Morrison was deliberately invoking him - but he had plenty of peers indulging in the same thing. And arguably not as well.
I'm not suggesting that you're suggesting that people see these clichés and suddenly that's their image of all disabled persons, but I do think that the power of these clichés to shape children can be - and is, especially these days - regularly overstated. (I'm not saying that they wouldn't offend you. I can understand why they might.) You seem to (and I might be mistaken) have a problem with the fact that Claremont's pattern is making mind control "non-consensual". You write that he's not "off the hook". Is there some danger posed by his writing?
I ask this because I don't fall in line with some of the current ideas about males taking their cues on how to interact with women from fiction or porn for that matter. There was an article in the NY Times magazine about the effect of porn on young males and it tried to present it as harmful, but the fact was that most of the guys in the article only claimed that it created some confusion to them. Of course this was enough to build an article around and allege that young males get their ideas of sex from porn which is simply not true.
When I was a teen I watched porn as secretly as the next guy and I never in a million years thought that it represented what actual sex was supposed to be like. Same for movies like Porky's. Simply because I existed in the real world and saw that there was nothing about porn that mimicked real life. When people want to pin the blame for people like Weinstein on a "rape culture" I don't buy it for a second. In order to believe there's a "rape culture" you have to ignore every thing in society (and there's always been since at least the 80's) that portrays forcing people to do things against their will as very negative. (Claremont even made it a point to have his good character Prof X be reluctant to control someone else's mind. How does subtext trump overt messages?)
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the only way one can blame Claremont for anything resembling a sexual "hang-up" or less-than-chivalrous attitudes towards women (which is the impression I'm getting you have of him) is if they lived inside a room where the only thing they were exposed to was Claremont books. And even then the argument doesn't hold water for me because Claremont women were very strong and there were overt messages of what healthy relationships looked like.
BTW, I'm no Claremont apologist here. If someone wants to criticize him for repeating himself or using too many clichés, I'm on board. It's the idea that somehow his writing is to blame for shaping children to have less than positive attitudes towards women or sex that I disagree with. I believe the origins of fetishes/what turns a person on, just like lesbianism or being gay, are enough of a mystery that we may as well just say that fetishists were born that way. Trying to figure out the actual roots of a fetish is like trying to interpret dreams - another once popular psychological exercise that over time proved to be something no serious psychiatrist or psychologist would want to read too much into. For the great majority of people a cigar really is just a cigar. For some it's a turn on from the age of 12 on - who knows why.
I guess I'm saying in my usual long winded way that some guys were going to be turned on by dominatrixes and some weren't -- well before they read Claremont's Xmen. Some guys got turned on by his comics and other guys just thought they were reading about super villains.
Are we sure Scott Snyder is still a good writer? What's the last thing he wrote that blew you away?
I had the same feeling reading these issues that I had with Metal; mostly that I didn't know what the heck was going on. I'm going to give them a reread to try and understand better, but in general I don't want to have to reread comics to enjoy them. I thought the Bryan Hitch era was overly simplistic; they've gone in the complete opposite direction now. But I don't think it's much better.
After catching up on Peter David's recent Scarlet Spider revival, I've noticed something that may be an unintended consequence of the big events. Unless you have read the event title or know what's happening, the subplot in the ancillary books almost cripples the momentum of the actual plot. I'm left too busy wondering when and how this all fits in and why this stuff matters to the overall story. Instead of the information being part of the setting and living in that space, the creative team just leaves it hanging. There are no editor's notes that clue the reader in as to what book to read to get that missing information. While it may be a slight nitpick, I think it's one that, decades from now may make a mediocre book unreadable. Anyone else notice this kind of stuff when you finally get to reading something months after it was published?
For an example of how it can be done right, I've been slowly making my way through Mark Waid's The Flash TPBs, taking sips here and there like a fine wine. I don't think there was anything going on event-wise at the time it was originally published--at least not in the Flash world--but if there was, I can't tell. And those stories are almost 30 years old!
Likewise, I doubt Spencer knew Las Vegas was an intrinsic part of an ongoing comic when he blew it up. Which led to Scarlet Spider not addressing it until Secret Empire was p. much done and the Damnation cross-over was written to undo it.
Part of the problem is Secret Empire was an event that felt editorially mandated, and not the correct end of the story that it ended up ending. Shadowland was where first noticed this happening, a story that should have been told slower in Daredevil, gets blown up into an event that pleases neither the readers who'd followed the story nor people picking it because it's the big Marvel event this month.
Not only do these events cause problems in other comics, they feel alien to the comics their writers produced to theoretically get to this event.
While continuity shouldn't be a crutch, things like this actively discourage from reading lots of the line as you have to deal with this sort of cognitive dissonance.
Compare that to Hickman's Secret Wars, where you feel rewarded the more of his runs you read leading into the final event. Though that had it's own problem where Bendis was so slow on X-Men, it references an event in the X-books he never got around to writing before he left.
I should have learnt my lesson with Jeff Lemire and Marvel by now, but the first issue had an interesting concept.
However, this issue felt like Lemire going "People called Jenkin's Sentry a Miracleman rip-off? I'll show them a Miracleman rip-off!"
MILD SPOILERS follow in case that is a concern--
I thought the story was fun, and it is not that it was poorly executed. I just have a pet peeve of this sub-genre of stories that throw the characters into another place where time moves differently, and then we are supposed to believe that, in this case, Bruce and Diana were basically sword and sandal warriors doing level after level of horde mode for, like DECADES of time. And then they return, having only been away for a few days or our time or something.
It's just too over the top. I mean, I know it is all make believe. But given how much King's writing often deals with the idea of trauma, and what the weight of experience still carries with you, it feels too over the top (maybe Silver Age-y) of an ask for him to have something of this scale happen, and then the characters who experienced aren't fundamentally changed. It just doesn't feel consistent with the other ways he writes Bruce, and what Bruce's relationship to history, experience, and trauma are. I didn't buy it.
I feel like if he and Jones wanted to tell the story of, basically, 'Bruce went off and did this intense thing, alone with Diana, for a LONG TIME, and still stayed faithful to Selina, then that could have worked if it was even if they experienced what felt like a month, or a year. But for it to have been decades just makes the whole thing silly. Oh well.
But it does end on a story beat that we just saw in Amazing Spider-Man #2 mere weeks ago...
The backup was Funky Phantom. Boy this was a heavy handed preachy mess about gun control. It was not good.
I get the impression King (who I usually love) seems to be taking the stages of grief a little too literally. It's one thing to become angry over Jason Todd being killed and want revenge. but over being dumped? This is a man who has repeatedly stopped himself from letting the Joker die (even if it's not by his hands) despite the uncountable number of murders that continue to accrue as a result of his mind-boggling level of self-control.
I enjoy flawed heroes but I also expect them to be better than an everyday hothead who gets so angry over being dumped that he feels the need to punch something/ vandalize a public bathroom. I'm not trying to equate the two but IMO getting this angry over rejection/things not going your way seems like it belongs in the realm of domestic violence or a child's temper tantrum. And I know Batman is stunted, but he's been around the block a few times when it comes to relationships. If I'm supposed to think "Well he never truly loved anyone before" - I'm rolling my eyes.
Thor will be worthy. Moew moew will probably be reassembled. There will be a new Asgard. What will really be different at the end of the war.
Man, I love the Metal Men, and this version is .... something. The storytelling constantly jumps back and forth in time, and is very confusing. Not sure I will make it through.
But everyone else just doesn't shut up, leading to some speech bubbles that are just a dense wall of text.
The heavily photo-referenced Alex Maleev-esque art is hard going too. Particularly when there's not enough references and you get the Mandarin holding the same goofy expression over three panels.
I think he's a good writer, there's just something about the way he writes that I've had trouble articulating. But after finishing this JL arc I feel like I understand it better. I have to be honest, I can't really tell you what happened in this arc. I sort of know, but I found my mind drifting with boredom often.
I think the thing I don't like about Snyder's recent work is that he tries to fit too much story into one... story. There's always so many parallel storylines, which sort of fit together, but he doesn't really reveal anything until the very end. So while reading it, it just feels like a disjointed mess. To me anyways.
By the way it's worth pointing out that I picked this up on the day it came out before I even became aware of the penis brouhaha. It's also worth noting that I never even noticed the penis, partially bc I was reading it less and less closely as I was slowly realizing that there's next to no story here, just a gimmicky reveal about Bruce's father which is presumably shocking bc it goes against every single thing we've ever known about the character. (It seems like lazy writing to me. Hey, guess what! Did you know Jor-El ran a sex slave ring on Krypton!? "Gripping!" "Changes everything you ever knew about the Superman mythos!")
The rest of the story was a question about whether or not Bats killed the Joker. First, who cares? This is an imaginary non-canon story. But to be fair: was there anything else here to make me care enough to keep reading for the answer? Not unless you count John Constantine offering up a narration on what it means to be human that amounts to literally nothing more than "Life sux and then you die"" and "Ain't a religion a crock?" It's all very sophomoric.
I'm not religious at all and I'm not the kind of person to be offended by religious based imagery, but the last page is the perfect example of the enormous double standard Christians are subjected to in this country. If this were any other religion that last panel would've never in a million years been allowed in something as mainstream as a Batman comic (Black Label or not).
This issue reminded me of Alan Moore's observations that many writers got the wrong lessons from Watchmen. This is "mature" like college students in armchair philosopher mode who think they're saying something profound when they realize people lie and can't always be trusted. (No offense to college students. I was one myself.)
As far as the nudity, I bought the Comixology version which apparently edited that out. Seems like a strange choice, perhaps because comixology doesn't have any sort of parental controls built in?
When Otto/Elliot is under the mask fighting Stiltman or teaming with The Night Shift to battle Master Pandemonium's cult the comic sings. The use of Digger here is perfect for Hawthorne.
When it's 6 pages of Otto arguing with Anna, it grinds to a halt. Though the story beat of Anna figuring out Otto's identity straight away is the smart one.
Wonder woman Earth one vol 1
It wasn't bad, but this book is an example of bad Morrison. It slow with no action and leaned very heavily in on Marston's personal beliefs and creation of Wonder woman (all with the Morrison wink/nudge). I love Grant, but this was a flop that I had high hopes for