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Hickman's Avengers & New Avengers vs Marvel's Avengers Assemble
FuzzySilk
Posts: 8
Am I the only one who find Hickman's Avengers to be too high concept and not enough superhero fun and high jinks? I know that the average reader now adays is 35 to 45 and not written for kids but I find his writing and stories boring and a pain to follow. I miss good old fashion comics, where the heroes fight against the villains and they stand for something. I'm not asking for the comics to be written for kids and to be dumbed down, I just want a good story, with some Superhero fun.
I have been catching up on my Avengers and New Avengers issues and I know we are building up to the New Secret Wars but I am not enjoying the ride. I think Hickman has a lot of neat concepts but I do not enjoy his superhero writing(I did love his Nightly News). On the flip side I have been watching Marvel's Avengers Assemble and really enjoying it! And I find myself wishing that the comics I am reading are more like the Cartoon TV show I'm watching. Am I the only one? Tell me if you agree or why you disagree. What do you like about Hickman's story and writing? Tell me what you would like to see more of in your comics. Give me a suggestion of what I should be reading.
On a side note I have been enjoying the new Teen Titans by Will Pfeifer. I thought the first issue was awesome!
I have been catching up on my Avengers and New Avengers issues and I know we are building up to the New Secret Wars but I am not enjoying the ride. I think Hickman has a lot of neat concepts but I do not enjoy his superhero writing(I did love his Nightly News). On the flip side I have been watching Marvel's Avengers Assemble and really enjoying it! And I find myself wishing that the comics I am reading are more like the Cartoon TV show I'm watching. Am I the only one? Tell me if you agree or why you disagree. What do you like about Hickman's story and writing? Tell me what you would like to see more of in your comics. Give me a suggestion of what I should be reading.
On a side note I have been enjoying the new Teen Titans by Will Pfeifer. I thought the first issue was awesome!
Comments
For example, the idea of Sunspot leading the Avengers seems ridiculous on the surface, but Hickman looks back to the history of the character and you realise this sort of role should have happened years ago. He's a son of a millionaire industrialist, who was later mentored by an immortal technocrat, of course he should be the young mutant Tony Stark.
It's not flawless, I think he hits some storytelling beats too often, but its more engaging and smart than most Avengers comics from the last 25 years and the payoff with Time Runs Out has been glorious.
Hickman’s Fantastic Four run was criticized for being a series of one-off stories that weren’t connected, until he was about halfway through his run, when the trades started coming out and people began to realize what he was doing. He was moving the pieces around and setting up a series of Big Things that led to the final third of his story, which felt like a HUGE Kirby-infused explosion of ideas. It was different than the runs that came before, and after, and in retrospect worked a lot better than the Big Ideas in the Mark Millar run, or the truncated run by JMS (full of plot threads that were left to dangle for all of eternity). Every story built to the conclusion, even if they felt like one shot fill-ins at the time.
His Avengers run feels the same to me, and with the leap forward, we are seeing all of the threads being woven together into something BIG. I am looking forward to going back and reading the whole thing, much like I did the Fantastic Four or Secret Warriors, so that I can see how he put it all together and the clues I missed at the time. I also love his grasp of character: Black Panther thinks strategically, the way a King would and Namor has the attention span of a teenager, which plays off of how he has been written since the 40’s. I love this kind of thing that rewards the long time reader and doesn’t just give us The Avengers vs The Wrecking Crew again.
If you are looking for more of the Classic style Avengers, I’d direct you to Mighty Avengers and Uncanny Avengers
Remender has done the same long burn plots as Hickman, but with the amps turned up to eleven. Uncanny Avengers #17 has something happen that other comics would have made multiple event series out of, there it is just a step to get to the next part of the story.
And the Al Ewing written Mighty Avengers, while unfortunately "blessed" with Greg Land as its original artist, has delivered the sort of weird genre hybrid Marvel superhero comic you used to get in the 70s pre-Shooter. For a "street-level" team they don't half deal with a lot of cosmic horrors.
I've been trying to figure out what it is that I don't like because I do like character development and things rooted in Marvel continuity. And I am not looking for nostalgia for nostalgia sake or a five issues arc that introduce some mysterious villain no one has heard, I do want story lines that change the status quo and matter. But I think you can do that and tell some great stories with the villians that all ready exist in the Marvel Universe.
I guess when I think about it maybe my issue is the Superhero vs Superhero that we have been getting lately. From Civial War to X-Men Schism to AXIS to this Hickman story. I'm tired of my Superheroes always fighting amongst themselves and that being what the storylines are about. I don't have a problem with some angst and arguments but I don't want the preponderance of what I am reading to just be the Superhero community to be up in arms with each other. I know it's realistic and makes some great story lines, I guess I am just tired of it and want more escapism and fun in my comics right now.
I did enjoy Uncanny Avengers but that too had the superheroes going at it. It seems like the villians should be able to run rampant with all the issues the superheroes have with each other. And I'm sure Secret Wars will probably be the Superheroes fighting there different counterparts, hopefully it will have some other stuff and villians in it too.
I will check out Mighty Avengers. Any other suggestions?
Other books I have been reading and enjoying at different degrees are:
All New X-Men
Avengers World
Batman
Batman Eternal
Captain America
DareDevil
Fantastic Four
Green Lantern
Green Lantern Corps
Green Lantern New Guardians
Guardians of the Galaxy
Hawkeye
Hulk
Iron Man (was enjoying this but just started Superior Iron Man so not sure if I'll dig it or not)
New 52 - Futures End
Lazarus
Nova
Saga
Sex Criminals
Teen Titans
The Walking Dead
Thor
Miles Morales -Ultimate Spider Man
Uncanny X-Men
Uncanny Avengers
Velvet
Oh and I am reading Avengers & New Avengers but we talked about those all ready.
Behind on a decent amount of these but am current on a lot. It is so hard to keep up on books... LOL
His FF run was good, but I thought that at times it was too concerned with being complicated for the sake of being complicated. I still liked it overall, though.
I normally like Hickman, period, but I feel like he's been given too much room here with the Avengers books. He just seems to wallow in his concepts for months and months and months. Whereas his Secret Warriors series could have used 15 more issues or so to really tell the saga he wanted to tell, I feel like his Avengers/New Avengers saga is bloated.
People here are making the comparison with "five issues arcs that introduce some mysterious villain no one has heard of that is all powerful yet some one is beaten by some lame bit of cheap writing at the end" -- and you guys are saying this DOESN'T resemble what Hickman's been doing? What about the very first arc that introduced the aliens on Mars, guys no one had ever heard of, and then they were randomly beaten by a new Captain Universe who came out of nowhere? What about when the Infinity issues introduced the "Mapmakers" or whatever, who were similarly turned back by some sort of amorphous power plan? I didn't dislike any of these stories (if they can really even be called "stories") but they do run the template of "Something bizarre happens for a while, and then it's resolved by way of some complicated machinations that we can barely understand." Same with the storyline about the Avengers being transported further and further into the future: it wrapped up with Cap going waaaay into the future, and then some future stuff happened, and then they were back in the present.
The pace has picked up in recent months, with the "Time Runs Out" storyline, but to me it's kind of funny that there had to be this breaking point, where all of a sudden the two titles just stopped what they were doing and then we're shuttled ahead in time a bit to see how these new battlelines between the different factions have been drawn out. Why couldn't we actually SEE these new alliances forming? Right before that, why did Hickman have to give us 25 or so issues of amorphous stuff about the future, and fighting tired JLA stand-ins, and Cap arguing with Tony, and Banner arguing with himself, and Namor and Black Panther arguing about the same thing for the hundredth time? Instead of all that repetitive crap, why not actually show something HAPPENING? He has a problem showing things happening. Instead we get endless exposition.
I DO think it's neat. It's definitely a different sort of comic booking. But it's absurdly drawn out. When you step back and think about how many pages this has gone on for, and how few actual stories have been told, it's nuts. Throw in the fact that every issue has been at least $4 each, with $5 issues sprinkled in at random, and I'm not sure how people are affording this. I have a discounted subscription and I sell my digital codes to a friend. That's how I'm swinging it still.
I have no problem reading lengthy storylines. But even with series like Sandman or Preacher or Walking Dead, I felt like individual collection-length installments were satisfying. I can't imagine anyone reading any 6- or even 12-issue chunk of Hickman's Avengers saga and finding it remotely satisfying in and of itself. The only comparison I know of would be Morrison's Batman saga, but personally I found that run a lot more interesting and exciting. Morrison isn't heavy on exposition or on characters standing around going in circles over the same metaphysical arguments for the thirtieth time, which is the way Hickman goes about things.
It probably seems like I'm really down on it. But I look forward to every issue. What's been... concerning... to me is that I see a lot of blanket praise for the run. And I'm happy that some people like it this much, but I just feel like it has several clear flaws... or "extravagances", maybe. I don't feel like Hickman has too many ideas, I feel like he only has a handful of ideas, none of which are very well thought-out in the first place, so he spends literally thousands of pages going over the same ideas and having the characters talk about them in similar ways ad nauseum. He just rolls over the same portentous phrases ("Everything Ends") until they seem more profound than they really are. And I feel like the moral dilemma of how to handle the Convergences has been done to death; it stopped being super-interesting a year and a half ago. So I don't need Cap and Reed still bickering about it.
And I'm all for giving Hickman characterization credit where credit is due, but let's be honest: Over the course of like the first 45 combined issues (Avengers + New Avengers + Infinity + Avengers World) Roberto was on like 12 pages, and all of his appearances were one-off joke panels with Cannonball. Suddenly after the flash-forward and the "Time Runs Out" stuff, Roberto is suddenly a mastermind who bought AIM. It's a cool role for him, and it's a believable role. But there was little actual development leading up to it. It just sort of happened. So once this 3,000-page epic is over with, if people are going to point to the 25 total pages on which Sunspot appeared and say "Hickman is a master of characterization", I'm just not going for it.
Hickman was introducing new story elements to his much larger plot instead of cheap narrative choices that were the whole of the plot. To me there is a huge difference in approaches and my long term enjoyment of the product.
I'm really loving that I cannot tell where he's going. Namor? Such a bastard but it's so in character. A lot of the Illuminati are getting good character defining moments.
I will say that after Infinity New Avengers did spin its wheels for a while with the different Earths. Maybe it'll play out by the end but I think even Hickman said he took a misstep there.