Captain America: Civil War

delericho said:

Yes, exactly that.
That's true. But they don't even try. Instead, comics these days seem to be all about the next big event - it seems they have a massive universe-changing event planned every couple of years.

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One bigger driver in the comics market is the decline of comic book stores and the rise of the collected trade. I'm not sure why it took so long to switch over (might have to do with the audience getting older and having more income and desire for a sturdier, shelf-worthy product), but there's a really high priority nowadays on stand-alone story arcs that span 4-6 issues, and can be easily collected into a trade. That's a big change in plotting and scripting. Event storylines sell books and provide cross-fertilization between lines. An X-crossover is a big deal, but one that crosses between different lines (ie the Black Vortex, which crossed Guardians and X-Men) potentially doubles the audience.

Personally, I had vowed to quit buying monthlies after Secret Wars and just get the trades. I'll run a few months behind, but there's not exactly a dearth of back material to acquire (or I could just...save the money). I'm a little bit on the fence now (clever Marvel - spinning out Secret Wars has given me a loophole to start buying the new X-books, since SW technically isn't done yet), but still leaning that way.

Would really like to see more of the Australian X-Men issues collected together. That time period is really foundational to a lot of stuff that's still in play today.

Nellisir said:

One bigger driver in the comics market is the decline of comic book stores and the rise of the collected trade. I'm not sure why it took so long to switch over (might have to do with the audience getting older and having more income and desire for a sturdier, shelf-worthy product), but there's a really high priority nowadays on stand-alone story arcs that span 4 the -6 issues, and can be easily collected into a trade. That's a big change in plotting and scripting. Event storylines sell books and provide cross-fertilization between lines. An X-crossover is a big deal, but one that crosses between different lines (ie the Black Vortex, which crossed Guardians and X-Men) potentially doubles the audience.

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Actually you've got a good point there and I wonder if the rise of the Trade collectables is the key motivator for the change. I can't remember how prominent Trades were back in the 90's, I know I didn't have the disposal income then to invest in them - much easier to just do single issues (it was also exciting to descend into the comic stall and secure the latest issue of the Swamp Thing Saga, Lone Wolf and Cub and th Elementals Sex Special)

I suppose that once they brought in the concept of graphic novels and made comics acceptable adult reading the mve to quality Trades was inevitable.

calronmoonflower said:

Well a new trailer is out that goes father into what the conflict is about.

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Did you intend to post a different trailer, because the one you did post is actually just a trimmed down Japanese subtitled version of the first one.

MechaPilot said:

Did you intend to post a different trailer, because the one you did post is actually just a trimmed down Japanese subtitled version of the first one.

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yeah nothing new in it, indeed less than the earlier one, but I do think it was an easier narrative to understand

Tonguez said:

Actually you've got a good point there and I wonder if the rise of the Trade collectables is the key motivator for the change. I can't remember how prominent Trades were back in the 90's, I know I didn't have the disposal income then to invest in them - much easier to just do single issues (it was also exciting to descend into the comic stall and secure the latest issue of the Swamp Thing Saga, Lone Wolf and Cub and th Elementals Sex Special)

I suppose that once they brought in the concept of graphic novels and made comics acceptable adult reading the mve to quality Trades was inevitable.

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Trades were climbing in the '90's, but it was much more specific, and there was a longer lag. Trades really took off in the mid-2000's (<cough>riseoftheinternet/declineofthebricksandmortarstore). <cough> All of Sandman and Hellblazer were collected into trades (a lot of Vertigo was), but X-Men books weren't. Age of Apocalypse had small trades for each mini-series in 1995/1996, but the full "Complete" series of trades wasn't until 2006. Inferno wasn't collected until 1997; Fall of the Mutants in 2002 (14 years after publication).

I think it was a sort of perfect storm scenario. Comics really boomed in the '80s and '90s, and as that audience ages and had more disposable income, computer games and movies made such "geekery" socially acceptable, so there wasn't the pressure there had been in the past to keep them "kid-only".</cough></cough>

Suspect there will be a Giant surprise yet to be revealed in the movie.