Comic Pants Podcast #36
How have Marvel Comics’ recent big crossover events shaped the overall landscape of the Marvel universe? Have the events been good reads? Have they improved or harmed the 616? In this week’s installment of the Comic Pants podcast, The Panteon discusses Marvel’s Civil War crossover event, it’s aftermath (mostly The Initiative), and finally, how Marvel is handling its properties in general. This is the first part of a two part podcast. Next week, we’ll be talking all about DC, and don’t forget to let us know what you think about it!
As always, commentary is welcomed and encouraged. Let us know what you thought of the podcast, and if you have suggestions for future podcast topics, leave us a comment or write in to the show! Listeners who write in could win cool comics with each broadcast! Please drop us a line at comicpantsfeedback@gmail.com to give us some questions or comments for the next show.
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Another great podcast, guys. For the Civil War mini itself, you definitely nailed it. Awesome action sequences and lousy, lousy characterization. I can only swallow so much of Millar’s forced jokes. Every Marvel Character uses crappy puns and witless banter? Screw that.
For the most part major crossovers are too heavy on my bank account and the only one I payed for every issue last summer was Annihilation. Its epic scope and its characters made Civil War seem like the side event (in my opinion). And I feel the same about Conquest this year. It might make for better stories simply because of all the untapped potential in the Cosmic Universe plus there is not as much pressure for writers to be burdened with continuity problems with characters who have all pretty much been given a clean slate. There’s much more room for creative development.
I wish I did have the extra $$$ to read these other books. I think I’ll have to pick up Ellis’ T-Bolts when it comes out in TPB.
10 Sep 2007 at 6:09 am
QuoteI’m probably one of the last few people who read Wizard (got the subscription for free HeroClix!) but there’s a “director’s commentary” with McNiven & Millar that is just infuriating. Millar claims Cap was supposed to be “more bad” than Iron Man and McNiven talking about the importance of fitting in a Dagger ass shot in Goliath’s death panel.
10 Sep 2007 at 9:15 am
QuoteI can’t believe you missed out on Heroes for Hire! That got the Civil War Banner. Not bad.
I haven’t read Captian Amerrica or Amazing Spider Man (largely because i know the end of it and it depressed me) - but maybe i will have to give them another look.
I will say of the Civil War, I like Wolverine, Fantastic Four, Heroes for Hire.
I felt blah about Frontline, the core book itself, and Thunderbolts
Didn’t like Runaways/Young Avengers, X-Men.
10 Sep 2007 at 9:22 am
QuoteMan oh man, you guys use the term Hate quite a bit.
I mean, for real? You actually Hate that much?
And yes: Do Not Buy is the only way to describe CW Xmen. I own every CW issues except the last 2 of that series.
Good Podcast.
10 Sep 2007 at 11:19 am
QuoteI’m going to listen to the latest podcast tomorow morning on my way to school. Looking forward to it, it’s a interesting discussion topic.
Personally I’d like to see more podcasts about this sort of topics than the ‘favorite artist of the moment’ type.
10 Sep 2007 at 1:15 pm
QuoteI was ready to give up New Avengers just prior to the Civil War issues but the artist showcase - different name per issue - kept me buying. Chaykin, who I’d never read before but heard much about; Leinel Yu; Jim Cheung; and Alex Maleev. I’ve given up NA now but I don’t regret buying those issues.
10 Sep 2007 at 3:27 pm
Quotehehe great podcast. I bet the 2nd part is going to be about how DC should close and give up lol
10 Sep 2007 at 4:29 pm
QuoteThe Annihilation stuff is definitely my favorite big crossover going on at Marvel. In fairness, I think that because those characters are not as well-defined, if they are written out of character very few people notice, and if they are killed in the course of the conflict, less people will be outraged.
It also helps that most of the writers on Annihilation are better writers than Mark Millar, or at least haven’t bought into their own hype so heavily that they’re indulging their bad writing habits as much as Millar does.
Wow, really? That’s kinda disgusting. I mean, Millar was clearly just off the mark in what he was trying to accomplish if he was actually trying to make Cap and the resistance forces the bad guys, but that ass shot was actually *planned*, and not just a case of the artist goofing off or not thinking it out? Jeez.
But it’s out of print. Actually, has been almost since its release, and hasn’t come back into print. Weird, since Marvel has given the series a second trade, and it’s damn near impossible to get the first one. I haven’t even read it, because it went out of print so fast, and that’s one of the reasons we didn’t mention it. The other is because we didn’t have it in the stack, so we forgot about it.
No, but the Psycho Man was in the room with us, and he kept pushing the Hate button on his big Kirby Console (TM).
Seriously, though, in an off-the-cuff discussion like the podcasts, we’re going to throw around more extreme (not in a Mountain Dew way) versions of our opinion, less considered and measured than in our writings. When we get to talking about comics, we can get a little enthusiastic. I don’t think any of us are hate mongers or anything.
Except Dan. He was the Hate Monger in the ’80s, before Scourge shot him.
It’s always going to be a mix. We’re not a superhero only site, we’re not a DC/Marvel site, we’re a comics site. And the craft of comics, favorite artists, writers, etc. is every bit as important as stories and characters.
Nah, but it probably won’t do us any favors in regard to any kind of perceived anti-DC bias.
None of us want DC to close up shop. We want them to be better, we like those characters and would really like to see them giving Marvel a better fight in the direct market. Better books on both sides breeds competition, and that breeds even better books on both sides.
10 Sep 2007 at 4:56 pm
QuoteThis is a great podcast, guys. I’m not kidding when I say it might be the best one so far because it gives a lot of food for thought.
There is one lingering question, though, which I feel you didn’t address, but which people have been wondering, which is: how and when will the Civil War era end? Yes, Civil War’s brought the Marvel Universe to an interesting place, but we know it’s not going to last forever. When will Marvel bring things back to its traditional status quo, and what will prompt that? Hard to answer, yeah, but I think it’s worth a bit of speculation.
10 Sep 2007 at 6:04 pm
QuoteRandy : Neither do I want DC to give up, they have their strong points (Brave and the Bold and others), but as a non crossover reader I’m finding it really hard to touch any mainstream DC properties because they’re all spin-offs.. But I guess you’ll address this in the second part
10 Sep 2007 at 6:15 pm
QuoteI say this without having heard the podcast (looking forward to it though): I know the Panteon comes down pretty hard on Civil War, and I don’t even necessarily disagree with your criticisms , but in defense of Millar and Civil War, being a relatively new comics fan (for about 2 years now) I didn’t really notice things like the poor characterization. I just enjoyed for the cool action and pretty pictures, I came into it hearing bad things, but I ultimately enjoyed it. Anyway, that’s my two cents.
10 Sep 2007 at 6:18 pm
QuoteI think Quesada and company’s “ignorance” concerning Iron Man’s villainous behavior is just an act. Marvel decided that Iron Dickhead would sell more books than old Iron Man so they just made the Marvel Universe be what they wanted it to be regardless of the damage to the characters. Personally, it’s Quesada’s whole “I’m smarter than the fanboys” condescending attitude that’s played a large part in driving me away from most of Marvel’s books.
After all Quesada’s bitching about genies being put back in bottles, he damages Marvel’s characters, possibly irrevocably, just to score some short term sales. Can anyone imagine having Iron Man team up with Captain America or Spider-man ever again without some big “I’m only doing this because innocent lives are at stake.” speech happening every time? Way to simplify storytelling.
Even if they hit some cosmic reset switch in the near future, it’s just going to feel like a cop-out. Trying to put Peter Parker back to his carefree days will work about as well as the whole clone fiasco. Fans don’t like being told that the stories they read have been invalidated. Not that DC is doing any better with their Countdown to Infinite Nonsense, but I’ll save that rant for the next podcast.
10 Sep 2007 at 7:41 pm
QuoteMan, that was a sweet gig.
10 Sep 2007 at 8:04 pm
QuoteT
And I’m thinking the Iron Man Movie next year will show the Iron Man that has been established for the last 40 years (as it should) and it will probably make fanboys even more outraged beacause these new situations have altered who these characters once were. I think change is good but for how large of an event this was, Marvel should have thought a lot deeper into the characterization. I feel the editors are as much to blame for allowing Millar to use these characters so 2-dimensionally.
11 Sep 2007 at 4:45 am
Quotewow, guys i’m so opposite to you on this one it’s scary. i feel like the onlky guy left on the planet that was PRO REG from the start, doesn’t think iron man is evil, likes the whole cap ‘look at what we’ve done’ ending, the split of the fantastic four, the inclusion of the punisher and the ’same man different war’ thing. the art, i loved all that.
pretty much my only thing i would change is spider-man, he was done quite badly. unmasking was a terrible idea and the book would have been better if spider-man started anti reg (the obvious choice) and then realised the responsible thing to do is go pro reg (not unmask but just register). that way around the audience would have gone ‘oh, if spidey’s pro reg then…they’re the good guys’. if they did that i’d have no complaints i don’t think
11 Sep 2007 at 4:53 am
QuoteWeird - I grabbed mine in a flurry, and didn’t realize it would be rare. I should note that it isn’t the world’s greatest comic by a long shot, just kind of fun, with great moments for Shang Chi, Palidan, Misty Knight, and Humbug.
I think that the Pro Registration side always had a slightly better argument, put well in She-Hulk and a few other places. But the truth is that most readers seem to have seen Iron Man as the villain of Civil War, and particularly with the Clone Thor killing Black Goliath, it’s easy to see why people would think that. It is interesting to consider how our opinions might have changed if one of Cap’s charges had inadvertently crippled one of the Registration heroes - granted nobody on Caps side came up with the bizarre idea of cloning Thor.
11 Sep 2007 at 9:09 am
QuoteParallel to what the prequels for Star Wars turned out to be vs. Civil War, there was a good story to tell in the Marvel 616 but the major inconsistencies and incongruities caused it to fail. They way Civil War read was an outline for things to come, and not a self-contained story. To get the characterization for the main players you had to go elsewhere (or in the case of FF you had to wait for another writer to explain Reed properly). A better ending would have been that a building comes down because someone flew through the structural supports, then the heroes had to shift into save and rescue mode. Cap being tackled and then coming to a realization? I shook my head and sold the series on eBay.
There were too many “cool” parts that had nothing to do with the Civil War story. The splash page of the new Thunderbolts? The 42 prison was just a bad plot device. The 50-state initiative. Punisher gunning down criminals in front of 20 other superheroes. There wasn’t a story, just a collection of cool parts, and it made for a boring read. Millar needed someone to review his scripts and punch them up (and not Bendis, maybe Slott or McDuffie). It felt like a commercial for Marvel for the next couple of years and not a self-contained book. But yeah, it worked. But it works because the writers that took up the mantle are making it work, not from the concepts themselves, but from execution and well-written stories. Ellis’ T-Bolts is awesome, The Order is interesting, and Slott is doing an awesome job with the new cast and playing in the post-Civil War sandbox. It’s because these writers can take the toys and develop their own storylines that the post-Civil War era is working.
Of course I’m only following the proven writers, so I’m not reading everything coming out. But I did want to mention that Faction is doing awesome on Iron Fist (people forget that Brubaker is COo-writing it with Faction) and Casanova is a cheap thrill, literally. He’s a good writer, but the Punisher concept left me such a bad taste that there was no way I’d pick up the War Journal. But it looks like the Skrull-war thing is the next summer event; Bendis is already hyping it up as a universe-spanning cross-over. It is going to kill the market with the event fatigue. I’m waiting for the days when a writer can take over a series and not have to have a cross-over dressing on the book’s cover for at least 12 issues. They need to stop thinking in a universe-altering mentality and shift to writing self-contained arcs that don’t have ninjas for 3 issues.
Lastly, you guys don’t wait a week for the DC podcast; you’d make my day if you posted it right away. Great job.
11 Sep 2007 at 5:19 pm
QuoteMarvel knew they were playing Cap as the good guy. But if you really think about total freedom for heroes is some scary shit! That why Hulk had to be out of Civil War becuse with Hulk around contolled SUPERS start looking pretty good.
11 Sep 2007 at 11:04 pm
QuoteI dug Civil War cause it allowed me to save money by not buying anything tied into it. Same with anything Crisis at DC.
Good podcast though. Always enjoy all y’all chattin’ away.
12 Sep 2007 at 10:46 am
QuoteYeah. That was about the only good thing to come out of CW for me. Though I was disappointed that Gray and Palmiotti only stayed on for the first arc.
As for CW and its aftermath…the tone turned me off for the most part, which is why for the most part all I’ve read of Marvel post CW is She-Hulk and Heroes for Hire.
15 Sep 2007 at 2:20 am
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