What Were They Thinking? Worst Comic Ideas.

[Kahuna Burger]

Seriously though, aging in the Marvel Universe has never been consistent. Franklin Richards has gone from 6 to 10 and then back to 6 more times than I can count. And time references change too, Ben Grimm once fought in WWII and Ironman was originally created during the Vietnam War. You just have to suspend disbelief some.

uh, I think the point is that sometimes you don't. Sometimes you get tired of suspending belief, or you find that the story isn't worth it. Sometimes you want MORE from a story, and if you don't get it, you grow out of it and move on to stories that give you more. (I also think this is stretching the use of suspension of disbelief, but thats probably another conversation).

Hey, if the episodic feel of a story without strong contiuity is what you expect or like out of comics, thats fine, but the whole "thats just the way it is" style of response isn't very meaningful. Its sort of insulting, really, especially on a thread started to rant about things we don't like in comics...

Kahuna burger

 

[Skade]

I'm not familar with Valiant, having only bought two issues related to their Image crossover years ago, so I know nothing about their efforts at keeping a stong continuity. Would their plans have worked in the Marvel and DC Universe?

It seems to me that while possible, the sheer volume of material would make it difficult to keep track of not only time, but every backstory and offhand comment in every comic, and have these crossreferenceable for the writers and editors. This is a lot of work.

I'm not making an excuse for continuity errors. One of the reasons I stopped reading several years ago was this very problem as it related to the X-men, and Wolverine in particular.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

I'm not familar with Valiant, having only bought two issues related to their Image crossover years ago, so I know nothing about their efforts at keeping a stong continuity. Would their plans have worked in the Marvel and DC Universe?

It seems to me that while possible, the sheer volume of material would make it difficult to keep track of not only time, but every backstory and offhand comment in every comic, and have these crossreferenceable for the writers and editors. This is a lot of work.

Yes, but at marvel at least, there were a lot of people working on each book. Not just the writer (or writers in some cases) but editors and assistant editors. If someone at the company decided that they actually cared about (time) continuity, it would have been trivial to say that one of the assistant editor jobs was to keep a calendar of the storyline and regularly submit it to the continuity editor. They would keep a cross world calendar and occassionally send memos to writers whose timeline was either lagging or excessively accelerated to do some catchup or downtime. It could be done, but probably wouldn't be because nitpicking time freaks aren't a big enough segment of their audience for it to matter. It would also work better in a comics universe completely divorced from the real world in terms of places, famous people and technological advances.

Now backstory is another issue entirely. To solve those kind of problems you basically have to have a writer have "ownership" of his charcters so other writers don't get it into their heads to mess with them, or a writer has to create in essence a character sheet and full background for every character he introduces and other writers have to have access to that if they are going to use the character in their stories... since we know that many characters are created on the fly with no idea of what the backstory would be (when new mutants was being perverted into the new X force, the artist basicly drew a bunch of characters and the writer tried to find places for them and make up personalities...) this wouldn't work without an overiding vision of the universe the different stories took place in.

I can certainly see how a new comics company/universe starting from scratch could make continuity work, but it would require a plan from the begining, IMHO.

Kahuna burger

 

[Viking Bastard]

I can certainly see how a new comics company/universe starting from scratch could make continuity work, but it would require a plan from the begining, IMHO.

CrossGen.

 

[Mistwell]

7) Comic Book adpatation of the "Howard the Duck" movie.

Umm..wasn't it the other way around? I thought the movie was an adaptation of the comic book, which came first. Howard the Duck comic was 1976-1980, and the movie was 1986.

 

[Villano]

Umm..wasn't it the other way around? I thought the movie was an adaptation of the comic book, which came first. Howard the Duck comic was 1976-1980, and the movie was 1986.

It's kind of like when Bram Stoker's Dracula came out. The novelization wasn't Dracula, by Bram Stoker, but Bram Stoker's Dracula written by Fred Sabrehagen. I always keep that in mind when someone asks what the definition of "irony" is.

 

[DarkSoldier]

What? You don't buy the fact that the mutant child is just growing at a faster rate? Heck, that baby (Cable) is now about about 30 years older than its father!

Well, when time travel's involved, all sorts of wonky stuff can happen.

Seriously though, aging in the Marvel Universe has never been consistent. Franklin Richards has gone from 6 to 10 and then back to 6 more times than I can count. And time references change too, Ben Grimm once fought in WWII and Ironman was originally created during the Vietnam War. You just have to suspend disbelief some.

It's not possible to reconcile Marvel Time with real time, especially if you have characters connected to historical events.

12) Hey, now that we've gone to the work of establishing a new Robin let's kill him.

The "Death in the Family" story was a fan decision; DC had a phone-in campaign for their readers to decide Jason Todd's fate (50-cent surcharge to discourage ballot stuffing), and the results were narrowly in favour of Robin's death. The creative team wrote two different stories for that issue: one where Robin lived, and one where he died, depending on the result of the poll.

 

[Dagger75]

For me was the old GI Joe comics. Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes teamed up on some renagade mission inside Cobra HQ. In the end Storm Shadow was killed by the Baroness. A few months later Storm Shadow came back from the dead and was a good guy. I always wondered what they were thinking. I don't collect comics very much

 

[theburningman]

Taking away Wolverine's adamantium, and then giving him BONE claws--What were they thinking here? This stunned me. STUNNED. It's like taking Superman's flight, invulnerabilty, and super strength away from him, and not just for a single story or story arc--but for YEARS. Crazy.

I have to agree with this one. I was a rabid X fan for years. For me, the moment when Magneto removes Wolverine's adamantium was an incredibly powerful moment. Then he goes into the Danger Room to try to get back on the horse. He went through something that had to be unimaginably painful, and lost something that was part of his identity for cripes' sake, but there he was, ready to battle through it.

Then out pop the bone claws.


What the f@#%?


Okay, calm down, everything will be back to normal in a few months. It's just a character-building story arc. But it didn't go back to normal in a few months.

I stopped caring about comics for a lot of reasons soon after that, and I don't even know if Wolverine ever got his adamantium back.

But I had a huge smile on my face when I saw the X-Men movie and saw the old adamantium claws in all their glory.

 

[Tom Cashel]

The problem with Grant Morrison is that his stories make you have to use your brain. Take that as you will. At least half of his DC/Marvel work (which I didn't care for) was designed to make fanboys and fatbeards froth at the mouth. The Invisibles was aces, baby, and the Wachowskis stole everything in The Matrix from that comic.

Preacher was great, but Garth Ennis is a wanker.

Power Pack. Now there's a lousy idea.

1603 is pretty dumb as well.