The Mighty Marvel Style!

In my quest to read the saga of the X-Men straight through, I found myself repeatedly hung up in the Silver Age issues.  At this point, I’ve finally reached the Roy Thomas/Neal Adams run to finish off the original run of the title, and the pace has greatly picked up.  But it wasn’t always so good for me.  A lot of the issues I’ve read have defined the term “dragging” as heavy dialogue, needless narration and overly goofy plots have caused many delays in my reading adventure.

But the experience has let me get a great view of the once-prominent comic production format known as the Marvel Style.  What?  There’s a definite style to producing comics?  That’s right!  And the means might surprise you.

Today, if one purchases a script book to a comic series, they might see it written more like a movie script, with visual cues from the writer to the artist.  All the dialogue is there and the artist can draw his scene with an idea as to where the dialogue is going to fit.  All the writing – plotting and scripting – is usually done before the artist begins.  This is actually quite different from how Marvel did it in the Silver Age (and beyond).

Instead, the writer would put together and issue’s plot, without the dialogue, and send it to the artist.  The artist would churn out 20 pages and send them back to the writer, who would then add dialogue to the art.  It comes as something of a shock today that an artist could produce the comic without knowing what the characters are saying or what range to be going for in expressions, but this was the style that Marvel adapted and used for some time.

A frequently occurring result of this, though, is that the writer would feel the need to explain everything that was going on during the panel.  Say Electro through a lightning bolt at Spider-Man, Spidey would not only dodge the attack, but he would yell to any within earshot that he was, indeed, dodging the attack.  It was as if many writers didn’t trust the art to convey the scene.  Another staple of many writers would be to have every single character in a panel say something.  Anything!

While the main point of the panel here is the conversation between Professor X, Cyclops and Marvel Girl, the other three X-Men each have a line that adds nothing to the story.  And that is what makes the Silver Age reading drag so badly.  Lots and lots of needless dialogue tossed in to fill gaps left by the artist.  Stan Lee in particular was one of the most frequent abusers of this act.

Bottom 5 X-Men Costumes

Costumes are amongst the most noteworthy parts of superhero comics.  Would someone like Captain America or Superman be nearly as iconic if they were running around in jeans and a t-shirt rather than their wing-tipped mask or cape?  With so many members of the X-Men having come and gone, we’ve seen a lot of costumes amongst our merry mutants.  But with every long-lasting design like Nightcrawler, Cyclops, Wolverine or Colossus, there’s a stinker that you just have to question why they even bothered wearing anything at all.

5. Cannonball
Though he had established a decent look for himself during his time on X-Force, Cannonball’s stints with the X-Men seemed to always bring with them a rather questionable wardrobe selection.  His first run had him wearing a Cyclops-esque blue costume, but with a belt that rather looked like a bra.  When he joined Storm’s team of X-Treme X-Men, he was decked out in a leather outfit with no sleeves, perfect for a lanky farmboy.

But it was when the X-Treme team returned home that Cannonball really stuck out.  He was given an awful orange/yellow costume complete with Booster Gold-esque collar sewn into it.  I suppose looking like a huge douche really doesn’t come across unless you have the needless popped collar to go with it.  Worse, staples of Cannonball costumes – a jacket and pilot goggles – were not present.  Instead his costume looked like the generic ‘grown up look’ that he appeared in back in New Mutants Annual #2 while he was enslaved by Mojo.  Alan Davis drew both looks…but I’m sure that had nothing to do with it.

Fortunately, this look was abandoned immediately after Cannonball took leave from the X-Men.

Genius!

 Oh, Rob Liefeld.  You really are the gift that just keeps on giving.

A sign of things to come?

Scott Brown (R) has won the vacant Massachusetts Senate seat, vacated by the death of Ted Kennedy.  Kennedy has held the seat since it was vacated by his brother John F. Kennedy.  A Republican has captured not just any seat in a heavily left-leaning area, but a Kennedy seat.  Not that the Democrats didn’t help – their candidate was such a bad choice, it made Jon Stewart hyperventilate on the Daily Show.

With Brown’s victory, the Democrats have lost their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.  Of course, that really doesn’t matter, since they did pretty pretty much jack shit while they had it.

One victory does not completely signal things to come in the mid-term elections come November, but it certainly seem that the Democrats’ lack of any kind of progress (or action, really) has lost them the support they had just over a year ago.

Updating the archives

While this blog is mainly about comics, TV, and other trivial/nonsensical topics,  there was once a time in which I was rather dedicated to a political blog.  Starting in late ‘07 and running through much of the 2008 election season, I typed almost daily about politics in an old site called (Beyond the Nation).

After the elections ended, the blog quieted down and was eventually abandoned when I moved over to WordPress.  I had pretty much forgotten about it until I got a spam comment on it this morning.  I then decided to use a neat feature and import that blog into the archives of the Spirit of 68, adding over 100 new entries to the archive.

Of course, the process has screwed up my categories, forcing me to reset each entry manually, but at least all my writings are intact.  If you’re waxing nostalgic for 2008 and the Hope we once had with it, feel free to browse.  I am quite proud of some of it.

And man, was I in the tank for Obama.  For real.

Nostalgia Wednesday: Beast Wars

There was a time, long ago, when Transformers was not the epic franchise it had been before, and would become again.  In the early 90’s, the original Transformers cartoon, comics, and even toys were fading into pleasant memories.  Repaints of the toys, dubbed “Generation 2″, would show up in KB Toys and Walgreens, and if you could find it, you could catch classic episodes, also under the “Generation 2″ moniker, but for all intents and purposes, Transformers were a popular fad that had bowed out.

Then came Beast Wars.

And everything changed.

Disliking Dark Avengers

I don’t like the Dark Avengers.  There – I said it.  I think the idea is unneccessary and heavily time sensitive.  I’ve never brought this up before because I had never actually read the title (save the two Utopia X crossover issues) and felt that I had no room to complain unless I did so.  I despised the relaunched Teen Titans solely because its launch ended my beloved Young Justice (at one time the only comic I was buying).  That lasted until I was given an issue of Teen Titans to read and hung around for over 60 issues.  I was afraid of warking on Dark Avengers, only to have to recant it and say I’m a short-sighted goober (which I totally am).

Over the weekend, I read Dark Avengers, and I don’t like it.

My original two points that I picked up from the solicitations held true.  The premise of Dark Avengers is that Norman Osborn took over what was SHIELD (now called HAMMER) after being hailed as a hero of the Secret Invasion and decided to form his own Avengers.  The regular heroes, knowing that Osborn is actually the Green Goblin (and subsequently crazy as all get out), aren’t exactly in a rush to enlist, so Osborn decides to make his own team of Avengers made up of villains dressed as heroes.  His team is made up of Hawkeye (Bullseye), Wolverine (Daken), Spider-Man (Venom), Ms. Marvel (Moonstone), as well as Ares and the Sentry.  Osborn himself takes the identity of Iron Patriot, using Tony Stark’s armor for his own PR purposes.

If this concept seems familiar, that would be because this is exactly what the point of Thunderbolts is (and has been since the mid 90’s).  But Dark Avengers doesn’t replace Thunderbolts – instead, there are two books with the same concept going on, both working for Norman Osborn.  But Dark Avengers has ‘Avengers’ in its title, so great.  It’s different.

Scrubs goes one season too long

The eighth season of Scrubs seemingly finished the series off with an excellent two-part sendoff in which central character J.D. (Zach Braff) took a job at another hospital and left Sacred Heart after viewing a montage of what might happen in his future (including marriage to off-and-on romance Elliot and kids).  He walked off into the night, and that was it for Scrubs.  An excellent ending to an excellent show.

Until they brought it back for another season.

But Scrubs would not be the same as it had been with J.D. at the helm.  The longtime set was abandoned for a “new” Sacred Heart and new characters, med students working at the hospital, would take center stage.  With the new direction, cast changes were made.  Central stars Judy Reyes (Carla) and Neil Flynn (The Janitor) would not be appearing, and Sarah Chalke (Elliot) and Braff himself would only be making a handful of appearances to deal with the transition.  Donald Faison (Turk) and John C. McGinley (Dr. Cox) would be the only returning members of the cast, along with a bit player from the last season becoming a main character, and the rotating cast of extras showing up here and there (though quite a bit watered down without the likes of Ted, Laverne or Jordan).  It was quickly evident that this show was not Scrubs.

After Braff’s five episodes were up and the character (again) left the show for the last time, ABC decided to double up the remaining episodes of the season and burn them off by the end of January.  It did the same with Better Off Ted.  Putting it simply, ABC is quickly freeing the timeslot of 9-10 on Wednesday nights.  In another way, it looks like both shows are done for.

It’s a sad ending for Scrubs, especially when the show already had its last hurrah with an excellent series finale.  Whether fans see it as the same show or not, this season is the 9th season of Scrubs, and it goes out as a cancelled show – with storylines and character development unfinished.  It is perhaps a lesson that once a show is finished, it should not be pulled out and drastically changed on the hopes that name recognition will pull it past the simple fact that it is not the same show.  Though, I actually cannot think of another example of a show pulling such a move.  I suppose if you consider this failed season a spin-off rather than a continuation, it could be considered the afterMASH of Scrubs.  Actually, that’s precisely what it is.

So farewell again, Scrubs.  We’ll see you on the 12 different stations you continuously show reruns on and remember of the better days gone by.

Ruining Magma

Fans of the original New Mutants (or even the current one, WHICH YOU SHOULD BE READING) are likely quite familiar with the character Magma.  She was the first new member of the team past the original five, debuting within the first 10 issues of the series.  As a character with a pretty odd origin (Princess of a lost Roman colony), one would think that creators would really have to try to screw her up.  But man, when they did their work on Magma, they really swung for the fences.  So let’s take a look at Magma.

Amara Aquilla was the daughter of a prominent figure in the lost colony of Nova Roma.  Basically, it was an Ancient Roman colony hidden in the Amazon that had not realized that the Roman Empire had fallen and the world had developed for nearly 2000 years since.  Of course, the New Mutants just happen to stumble upon the place (having previously been undiscovered this whole time), and they have a big battle with Selene (of Necrosha fame).  Long story short, the kids win and Amara’s father sends her to their school so she can learn about her powers and the new world.

Magma was a mainstay of the team for over half the book’s run until she became the first victim of Louise Simonson’s wash of the New Mutants cast when she took the book over from Chris Claremont (mainstays Magma, Magik, Mirage and Cypher were jettisoned in favor of the kids from Simonson’s X-Factor).  Magma became infatuated with Empath of the Hellions (the New Mutants’ evil counterparts) and transferred to Emma Frost’s Massachusetts Academy.  Of course, Empath was the shadiest of shady kids with the power to affect emotions.  But it turned out that he wasn’t manipulating her, and the two were in love.  Until it was revealed that he was manipulating her.  Or something.

Anyway, after the Hellions got wiped out in a move to kill off as many Claremont villains in one storyline as possible (the Reavers ate it too), the leftover New Mutants/Hellions went to Nova Roma to share the news with Magma and Empath.  It was there that the storyline really got wanky.

Merry Christmas!

Have a happy holiday, everyone.  How could you not?  The senate passed a health reform bill and a crazy woman knocked the Pope down during Christmas Eve Mass.  What an excellent day.