Dread
TMNT 1984-2009
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It reminds me of what the Green Goblin said in 2002's SPIDER-MAN: "The one thing people like seeing more than a hero...is to see a hero fail. Fall. Die trying." Apparently Marvel's editorial department must agree, because as you've noted, all of the major storylines from the past 2 years or so have involved almost nothing but quagmires in which the heroes seem to not triumph. True, life rarely has "outright happy endings", but do people really read comics because they want to see that all the time? Cripes, Hollywood movies all but bend over backwards to have everything end happily for the simple fact that audiences respond better to them (albeit sometimes this sort of ending doesn't work for some stories; imagine how boring ROMEO AND JULIET would have been if they just lived and got married?).BrianWilly said:
Like you said, tragedies in literature have their place so long as they are offset or are seperat to stories that aren't. Even Shakespeare wrote some "comedies". What's Bendis' excuse?
As for the lack of "fighting supervillians", IMO there are a few reasons for that:
1). Any decent villian is either overused to the point of becoming an tired, overcomplicated cariacture of him/herself (Magneto and Norman Osborn are clear examples), or are in a phase of being anti-heroes, like the Thunderbolts, like Mystique, Baron Zemo, etc. Lower tier or chronically mishandled villians are usually killed outright or firther mishandled in the name of "accuracy". Always ironic that a good character can make a stupid action and its always justified "in the name of a story", but a villian desperate to reach the big time can never evolve for any reason?
2). Marvel seems to currently be in the belief that concepts like "good" or "evil" are simple cliches of a bygone age and that it is the "times" that create good and bad, and so thus in any storyline, a villian could be a hero and a hero could be a villian. This is usually the same train of thought that leads to "one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter", which is absolute baloney because George Washington during the American Revolution never did the same things as many Middle Eastern terrorists do (slaughter/rape innocent women and children ON PURPOSE, kill entire villiages and then blame their enemies, hide amungst civilians to deliberately force the enemy to kill civilians, etc). The concepts of good and evil are also what comic books were founded on, and shedding them away for the name of soap opera sort of takes away some of the classic rules of the universes. If even the Joker can redeem himself, and if even Batman can be depicted an an unreasonable Fascist, then how can you root for or against anyone?
3). Marvel has been under the philosophy that "nothing should obstruct a good story". In Joe Q's early days, this was used as an excuse for writers to abandon continuity. Now, though, either because of fan backlash or DC conviently having strong continuity for their 2005 event (or both), Marvel wants to keep books interconnected. However, when it comes to certain characters acting "oddly" to suit the purpose of a storyline, there are no end of excuses. DISASSEMBLED is the clear example. Wanda suddenly going bat-crap crazy midway through, no one noticing, etc. all comes with some conviently excuse that usually boils down to "we wanted X to happen, which meant that Character Y had to do X". Even in DECIMATION, the X-Men have uncharacteristically allowed government sanctioned bigots to step all over them, force muties into an intern camp, and be guarded by Sentinals (the equalivant to robots dressed like masked KKK members guarding the HQ of the NAACP under U.S. authority, and the NAACP encouraging it); at least until CW (or until Marvel realized they didn't milk the X-audience with CW, so they needed another X-book. Marvel never needs a good reason for another X-book; just look at X-MEN: FAIRY TALES or whatever the hell its called).
The irony, of course, is that "good stories" in the total, classical sense don't need endless excuses. The quality is seen for itself. Character actions are explained, justified, and fit. Alan Moore didn't have to write endless letters explaining why Superman got pissed at Mongul at the end of FOR THE MAN WHO HAS EVERYTHING, and so on. Marvel does a lot of telling the audience what it wants, rather than listening. Yet it relies on this audience for good times, and always blames it for misfires. "We were only doing what the fans wanted".
4). Comics in general have been on an upswing of trying to "make up" for the corniness of the Silver Age by denying it ever happened with darkness. Just look at IDENTITY CRISIS for a clear example; the Satellite JLA is revealed to have mindwiped people, and Sue Dibney gets raped and killed, and her husband Elongated Man going from a fun, quirky hero into a grieving, near psychotic mess (with justification, at least). IC was a clear example of using a gritty story to "explain away" some of the corniness of the old days. "Oh, those villians were hammy not because that was the way of the 50's, but because the JLA were ruthless lobotimizers". Like IC or not, that was basically the message. I just wanted to use a non-Marvel example to make the point. Therefore, if the Big Two industry is going this way, then it is logical that Marvel would follow suit, and perhaps go overboard, trying to achieve the same aim. The industry seems to want to tell dark, brooding, angsty tragedies and add bloody retcons to classic characters (like the huge load of evilness heaped onto Xavier in DANGEROUS and DEADLY GENESIS, while ironically, Magneto is THIS CLOSE to becoming Jesus Christ) to sort of scream breathlessly about how much they're no longer being childish; a sign of adolescence ("I'm NOT over-reacting! I'M A TEEN-AGER!!"). That means that old school "crimefighting" at Marvel is seen as old hat, as something today's elitist, sophisticated audience no longer wants to read, or at least some writers don't feel is interesting enough to sell a storyline. Old-school storylines where Ultron made you fight cyborg monkeys didn't have that air of pretentiousness and quality; they either had it or they didn't. Dark, broody, angsty stuff can give the air of quality without actually having any, the bane of a lot of indie films. Anyone can act sad when bad crap happens to them. Duh. Is this a surprise?
5). Unlike DC, Marvel rarely made as big a deal of their heroes having a sense of "community" like they did, usually to justify why heroes would punch each other silly over the simpliest of misunderstandings; even Cap and Spider-Man have punched each other for really stupid reasons. While Marvel feels that "crime-fighting" is an old-hat storyline for a bygone era, they apparently feel that "heroes punching each other over misunderstandings, regardless of any prior friendships", which is just as old as crime-fighting (SUPERMAN covers from the Golden Age show Superman vowing to "destroy" someone for simple crap a lot of times, even if they were fellow heroes), is a storyline that is well worth investing heavilly in. BrainWilly has spoken at length about how cliche this plot point is, and how rationally it rarely makes any sense, but the writers love it enough to use it again, and again, and again. But villians plotting world takeover is now moot?
6). Marvel in general seems to have a more pessismistic world than DC's in the name of realism, where the public rarely trusts heroes for long, and the heroes rarely trust each other. Even teammates for years can hammer each other through walls over any misunderstanding, simple or extreme. But to be fair, supervillians haven't always had any easier time forming alliances, either; just look at the Sinister Six.
7). Yeah, I guess it is much like themes from reality TV, in which poor character traits like betrayal, jealously, anger, and so on are played and exploited for the viewing pleasure, but morality is sometimes seen as hammy. The fact that this level of cynicism has moved to superheroes could be troubling.
8). CIVIL WAR is a complicated story wrapped around an attempt to tell us how bad times have gotten since Bush became President and the war in Iraq started, for those of us who haven't gotten the picture yet. Quite frankly, you'd have to be living under a rock or fed on nothing but AM talk radio to not get that impression from the majority of comics, TV shows and films in the past 6 years. For those of us who don't live in Texas, its reached the hieght of overkill. The choir's gone deaf because they've been preached to for so long, so loudly. Yes, yes, I know, Bush is the anti-christ and everything bad that happens in the world, from war to pestilance to your bus braking down, is all his fault. Can we please switch subjects? You're making my ears bleed.
To this end, this means that the real supervillian is the government, which seeks to crush your civil liberties in the name of security, which is what the SHRA does. All its safety measures and valid points are moot because it FORCES metahumans to work for the government, much like a draft; submit or be jailed, resistance is futile.
Fortunately, there are still Marvel comics, and writers, and others, who still like "clean superhero action" and write books to that end, where heroes are heroes and villians are villians, and it's written well that modern drudgery doesn't matter. If CW isn't your cup of tea, please, seek these books out. I buy it because despite it all, CW does genuinely interest me and isn't a bad story so far, but I don't condone fans who just blindly by to "maintain collections". Vote with your dollars when you hate it. I always have. If I didn't, I'd have bought ASM before CW. I'd still be buying most X-books.
Joe Q says the year-long event is getting a rest after CW, conviently when DC has also stopped doing that. Let's hope this time his word is good, because these characters seriously need some downtime to react, to heal, to stop punching and build up something that was destroyed.
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Though i'm still hoping Morph will turn out alright.
