Beyond The Panels #2: Where I Piss Off A Lot Of People For Bad Mouthing A Company Everyone Likes, Especially A Segment Of It That Most People Love

So, last post, I said I was going to talk about the three companies I read. That's what I'm going to do, but first, I'm going to give you a little more background on myself and my comic love. It will put this whole thing into perspective and will hopefully explain the part where I get all grouchy fan on a certain company.

So, the first comics I fell in love with were Marvel books in general, X-Men books in particular. I specialized, but I also read all kinds of other Marvel books- The Incredible Hulk, Captain America, Silver Surfer, Spider-Man books, the Avengers, Fantastic Four, and others. I read some DC, but it was mostly during events- so I read the Superman books during Death Of Superman and Reign Of The Supermen, the Batman books during Knightfall. Marvel, though, was my jam. It was my shit. I wouldn't read a DC book on a regular basis until Grant Morrison's JLA and Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's Preacher. After 1999, I pretty much only read X-Men stuff on a regular basis, but started buying up a lot of DC trades, Vertigo stuff in particular.

During this time, I did read some Image, but mostly Jim Lee's stuff, because he was my favorite artist at the time. As far as it goes, old school Image looked great- they had the best artists in the industry at the time- bu the stories weren't great. Still, there was some good stuff and Alan Moore was working on WildC.A.Ts, so you know, it wasn't all beautifully drawn, incompetently written stuff.

I started buying a lot more comics on a monthly basis again in about 2002, 2003 and it was mostly X-Men stuff. At the time, Wizard was singing the praised of JSA, so I started reading it. And it snowballed from there. I started buying more and more DC stuff and I started liking it more than most of the Marvel stuff I was reading. DC felt deeper to me- there was so much to learn and so many things tying characters together. Maybe I felt that way because I already knew all that stuff about Marvel and DC was just shiny and new to me, but there was something about the DC universe that I really enjoyed. Maybe it was that at the time, the world was getting darker: terrorism and war and the Bush Administration all blended together to make me want to escape. Marvel seemed more real, reminded me of the real world. DC was more fantastic. It was a better place to escape to.

DC became my publisher of choice, but I still read Marvel stuff. I'll be honest- I wasn't a fan of the New 52, but really liked the first Marvel NOW. Of course, things change. And now we're going to talk about that.

And, because burying the lede is fun, let's talk about Image.

I read five Image books- The Wicked and The Divine, Deadly Class, Saga, East of West, and Black Science. Image is in a strange place right now. They started out as an artist driven company, but they had a simple model- if you created it, you own it. Of course, in the beginning, the seven founders owned all the characters, even though in the cases of Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld, they didn't create every character. It was honestly a bit disingenuous- these guys left Marvel and Marvel DC so they could own their own stuff, yet they had their little fiefdoms were if people created stuff for them, they owned it. Image was known for great art and delayed books and I personally stopped reading Image stuff in like 1997 (with the exception of J. Micheal Straczynski's Rising Stars, which started in 2000 and it was another book Wizard raved about, but I digress). Lee wasn't really drawing anything I was interested, I had stopped caring about Spawn about three years before, and had realized that Liefeld's stuff was shit. Apparently, in the 20 years I wasn't looking, Image evolved. They became more writer driven and they got behind their original ethos- you create it, you own it. Now, Image is the biggest indie publisher out there, with some of the biggest names in the industry working on books for the publisher.

I love the Image books I read. It feels like Image is the new Vertigo- full of horror, fantasy, and sci-fi, with the adult sensibilities to match. The shipping schedule is a bit different- of the ones I read, none of them ship a book every month in a year, but that's okay, because it means the same artists get to draw the books. It gives them a continuity of style that Marvel and DC books don't always have. I think my only qualm with Image right now is that they aren't doing more outside of comics. Right now, they have the most diverse publishing slate. Pretty much any kind of book you want to read can be found at Image. In this time of comic TV shows and movies, Image is woefully under represented (and their representation, The Walking Dead, is popular but not very good) and it shouldn't be. Image could be a force to get people more interested in comics, but not enough of their creators are working to get their IPs out there. Other than that, I love Image right now.

On to DC.

I read a lot of DC books right now. A LOT. Here, I'll list them- Superman, Batman, Action Comics, Nightwing, Justice League, Action Comics, Justice League of America, Super Sons, Titans, Doom Patrol, Cave Carson Has A Cybernetic Eye, Bug: The Adventures of Forager and Shade The Changing Girl. I feel like I'm missing one or two. Anyway, after being not very interested in the New 52 (except for Grant Morrison's Action Comics), DC Rebirth brought me back. I was a huge post-Crisis partisan. That was my DCU. So, when the New 52 did away with it, I figured it was time to take a breath. So I did. For five years. I still loved DC, but I just wasn't as interested. I'd pick up a few things, but you know. It wasn't the same.

Then DC Rebirth happened.

DC got me, and a lot of other people, back. They combined all the stuff we loved about old school DC with a dash of the new, mixed it together, and voila! Everything was fixed. A lot of people say DC went back to the well and is playing it safe and sure, there's some of that. However, what DC is really doing is a lot more simple- they're just telling good stories. They're getting out of the way of creators and letting them create and it's paid off for them. You can tell when a company's editorial department is putting their hands in things too much (waaay more on that later). I don't get that feeling with DC. I feel like they're letting the people on books do what they want. They're trusting them.

Also, their Young Animal imprint is great. The only one I don't read is Mother Panic and I only just dropped that book a month ago. It was okay, but just not worth it for me anymore. That said, Doom Patrol and Shade The Changing Girl are two of my favorite books that come out every month. Shade and Cave Carson are going hiatus after next month and even though it's going to save me money, I'm going to miss them.

Now, let's get down to business. Let's piss some people off. Let's talk about Disney's Marvel Comics.

Right now, I'm reading X-Men: Gold, Old Man Logan, Generation X, Astonishing X-Men, Steve Rogers: Captain America, and Secret Empire. They're good books, not great. They have their moments. Marvel has it's moments. They aren't completely horrible, but I'm going to blast them for a few paragraphs anyway.

So, remember how I said you could tell DC wasn't editorially driven? Yeah, at Marvel, it's sort of the opposite. At Marvel, you get the feeling that it's not just editorial controlling things, it's also the corporate structure and the owners telling creators what to do. Now, that said, I'm not here to complain about Marvel being all "SJW" now. I actually like that Marvel has diversified it's characters and I liked that it's trying new things.... I just think it's failing miserably at it. A big reason for that is simple- no one want to work there.

Remember how I said I enjoyed Marvel NOW? That was in 2012. At that point, Marvel had guys like Rick Remender, Jonathan Hickman, Matt Fraction, and Ed Brubaker putting out killer work. Well, now, they're all at Image, still putting out great stuff. They all left Marvel. Image books, even ones by superstars, sell less than Marvel. They have less visibility. I get that owning your own stuff is great, but there has to be more to it than that. Why else would you leave Marvel? You can work at both. They all left around the same time, as well- not long after Disney bought Marvel.

This leads to me believe that something in Marvel drove them away. Personally, I would say it's that feeling I have- that the company is mandating the fuck out of everything, telling creators what to do.

I love Marvel. It's my first comic love. Right now, though, beyond a few things, I just don't care. I read my X-Men books (which Marvel had tried fucking with by pushing the Inhumans over them, but that didn't work out very well) and a few other things, and that's it. Once Secret Empire ends, I'll drop Steve Rogers: Captain America and just read  my X-Men books. Why you ask? Well, I feel like Marvel just doesn't care about me. They have a new target audience and it's not the ones who buy the comics.

I'm going to tell you a story. It's going to make me seem bitter. I don't give a fuck.

Marvel went bankrupt in the 90s. There were a lot of reasons, but a big one was just there books weren't all that good. DC had all the good writers and Marvel had... the X-Men. That's it. Still, I stuck around. I bought so many X-Men books a month. I bought mostly Marvel stuff. I wasn't the only one. A lot of us stuck around and kept buying Marvel. Because of us, Marvel is still here. We made the company valuable enough for other investors to come in. We made other companies want to do business with them. We did that.

Now, Marvel is a juggernaut. Their movies make billions of dollars. There are people right now who have never read a Marvel comic and never will, but they'll plunk down 9 bucks every couple of months to watch a Marvel movie, then go online and talk about what a nerd they are for it. They love Marvel so much, they'll never read a Marvel comic and look at down on you for wondering why they won't. They're Marvel's new target audience- a fair weather fan, someone who is only around because someone took superheroes into a medium they can watch and not get made fun of for it.These are the people Marvel is trying to make happy and in the process, they're pissing off people like me. Right now Marvel publishes way more books than DC, yet their market share is about the same. Why? Because we aren't reading their books in the same numbers we're reading DC books in. Why? Because Marvel feels like it doesn't care about us anymore.

And let's be real about the movies- they aren't that good. They're trite, formulaic action movies. Three of them are great: The Avengers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. That's it. Those three movies deserve praise. The rest are like 80s action movies, but not the great ones, like Die Hard. They're more like Cobra. Do you remember Cobra? Probably not. Do you remember what Doctor Strange was about? Probably not. Also, they aren't "just like the comics". They aren't funny. They aren't well written. They just are.

Yes, I watch every one of them. I never said I wasn't an idiot.

I get going where the good money is. That makes sense. Don't fuck over your core, though. One day, these movies aren't going to make billions. When that happens, Disney will sell Marvel. Then what?

Then, it's back to us.

See, I don't hate Marvel. I said above I love it, but I love it like a girlfriend who left me but we became friends again. I'm happy that girlfriend is still around and I get to hang out with her, but I don't trust her anymore. Marvel has hurt me. They left me behind to chase the money. Plus, I just want them to be better. Their comics are good, but right now, the DC and Image books I read are killing them in quality. The movies are alright, but have become diminishing returns and let's be honest- I'm not sure if I want to stay around after Avengers: Infinity War. It can only get worse, plus you know that some of the actors who made the movies worth watching will be gone.

Right now is a great time for creativity in comic industry. There's so many great things happening and it feels like Marvel isn't a part of that. It makes me sad. I want them to be great. I want the industry to be great as a whole. It's better for all of us. Now, this sort of things happens in cycles. Back to 2012- Marvel was better than DC. So, there's hope. Maybe this time next year, I'll regale you all with talking about how much better Marvel is. I can only hope.

I know how I'd fix it, of course- fire Joe Quesada and Tom Brevoort, and tell Axel Alonso that he can do what he wants, hire who he wants, and let them run wild. That's just me, though. I'm probably wrong.

Anyway, that's it. Image and DC are great. Marvel is pretty good, but needs a lot of work to get back to being great again. I know when you saw the title, you were probably waiting for me to start slinging all kinds of shit around. To be honest, I expected myself to as well. However, when it comes right down to it, there was no shit to sling. It's not like Marvel is irredeemable. It's just lost it's way. It'll find it's way back. It always does.

That's all for now. Join us again next time on....


BEYOND THE PANELS!!!!!

Next Issue- I'm gonna talk about Alan Moore. I have opinions on him. I will share them with you. There will be words in sentences and sentences in paragraphs. I will probably bring up Grant Morrison.