Terrence Howard still pissed!!!!!

If bringing Spidey, the FF, Iron Man, the X-Men, etc to the big screen in an entertaining and exciting way is evil, then I'm down with it. When I was a kid I could never have imagined that it could happen. Stan Lee has done a great job IMO and I am glad he is making huge profits.

Marvel's long time comic fans are by and large very pleased with its Hollywood projects.

 

I'm pleased by it definitely...

sorta geeky over it too...

You know how long I waited to see gambit on the big screen?

If Wolverine movie has the Sentinels, I'll geek even more

Punisher: Warzone?

oh hell yes

lol

Captain America?

Whaaaaaaaaat

:rock:

black captain america?

oh hell yeaaaaaah

 

Hey! You've completely misunderstood me. I'm a huge comic book fan, and I could talk your ear off about Spiderman (didja get the Obama issue? I preferred the Savage Dragon Obama issue myself, but they were both cool), Iron Man, X-Men, and all of it.

Stan Lee is, of course, a God. No denying it.

I'm a long time fan of Marvel's STORIES myself.

As a business however, they are evil. They intentionally leveraged an industry crash in the 90's so that they could eliminate competition from independent labels. It was blatant, it was shameful. If they can do that, I wouldn't be surprised if they secretly shot Terrence Howard's puppy.

That's all I'm saying.

 

Good to know you're a true believer. I don't doubt they played hardball to stay on top. Capitalism can be ruthless. I see your point.

 

well since we are talking about marvel, has anyone heard that john singleton will direct luke cage and the black panther. me being an advid black panther fan i really hope he doesn't screw it up. i'm praying to the comic gods. 'm with petty i am a geeky over it too:smt096

 

Wow! Stan Lee is going nuts. The Nintendo generation will have to do some research to see who these super heroes are. T'chala is the man.

 

i read somewhere that originally he was a black guy during the ss project

 

Well, personally I dislike TH and, although I agree DC isn't really the guy for the job, better him than TH, in my opinion.

I'm sure DC will do a good job, even if he's not really built for it. LOL

 

Agreed.

 

Never cared for Marvel. I love how Marvel fans keep talking about how their characters/superheroes were more real and down to Earth compared to DC's. They should stop that. That was the case in the 60s and 70s but its not like that anymore. Bragging about it is like DC bragging that it had the first superheroes (as national Comics) when it introduced the genre in the 1930s. Anyway over the last 25 years Marvel has been the least innovative comic company. Even independents kick its ass when it comes to creativity. And DC was the creative center of the comic universe in the 80s and 90s (the works that company put out that decade was amazing). Marvel ceased from being groundbreaking a long time ago (the last truly great work it put out was Frank Miller’s Born Again series for Daredevil). But its fans keep plucking down money for the same, watered down garbage of the X-Men and Spiderman. Oh, and by the way Iron man, Black Panther, Captain America, etc never were really good comics. There isn’t really a storyline from any of those characters that is truly worthy of note.

I'm out of the loop now but both Marvel and DC have still resorted to conservative ad safe storytelling again involving superheroes. I go to a comic store every once in awhile and its soul draining as all the dudes recommend to me the one million crossover series involving all the characters from the Big Two. Good grief. This should have stopped at its peak with Crisis on Infinite Earths. But as is typical everything gets recycled with superhero comic books. I tend to agree with a recent article on CHUD that perhaps the best thing that could happen for the comic industry is the death of the superhero genre. The best comics these days, based on those who cover the industry, are mostly non-superhero related from independent companies. But we American boys refuse to let go of our adolescent heroes to move on to different things. At least that’s my take on it.

And while I’m not a fan of the underdeveloped Black Panther and the ridiculous Luke cage, I still want that hack John Singleton to stay far away from them. The guy is an average director. And for those of you who complain about the lack of IR between BM/WW in films, when Singleton got the go ahead to do Luke cage one of his first choices was to cast cage’s white lover (January Jones I think) with a black actress. Even worse he wanted to cast fucking Tyrese as Cage. What is up with Singleton’s obsession with Tyrese (whom he once referred to as the “Black Tom Cruise”)? And dammit stop casting these dudes who only wear their hair short or bald and can’t grow at least a mini-fro. Cage needs to have at least a mini Afro. Luckily the whole movies project fell apart in pre-production. As long as Singleton is involved I’m hoping it stays that way.

 

yeah supposedly they were running a 'tuskegee airmen' syphillus-type experiment, with african-american men, testing super-soldier serums on them, before using them on white soldiers.

the serum worked on him, making him like the first capt', but it ate away at his mind and shit

that would be bad ass...wouldnt want don cheadle playing him tho

lol

ALSO, if you noticed, the latest Hulk movie had a SS serum tie in, where the guy who turns into the Abomination, gets the stuff and pulls a captain america style fight with the hulk. That was my favorite part of the movie, because the footage, to me, provided a prelude to what the upcoming cap movie would be like. The guy was really strong, agile, peak of human performance, without becoming a mutant.

 

i did notice that as well, i guess with the exception of the spidey and xmen trilogies most of these movies will have the super soldier tie-in cause if you think about it, even ironman had nick fury coming to recruit stark for shield at the end. and you know shield is basically a lead in to the avengers movie. (that i cant wait to see). that should include the black panther. but whatever i'm not tripping. but even the new wolverine movie is gonna be about their ss program. followed by the next ironman then i heard thor. then captain America. then the avengers. not to mention john singleton has luke cage and BP.

 

Jamal, I appreciate your comix knowledge, but your bias is clearly showing. You must be a DC Guy. Don't hate on Marvel though, Stan Lee has pushed the artform to heights never imagined. You simply cannot deny this.

Also, Power Man, although not a "good comic" apparently had quite an impact on you since you are so particular about who portrays his character--a character that clearly was well developed and imprinted in your mind.

Signed, Sir Nose (Marvel Guy)

 

Shouldn't independents always be kicking the ass of both Marvel & DC in terms of creativity? Is that not the nature of independents?

I'm wondering, too: Are you a DC fan, or are there some particular independent labels you care for? Or are you just turned off by the whole industry now (which would be unfortunate).

 

Check out Tyrese's new comic book character



lol

isnt dude planned to play a character in an upcoming movie?

 

Sorry, Sir Nose. I disagree. A little background ...my first "real" job was at 15 working at a comic book store. I had been collecting since six actually and went and worked at dozens of conventions. I read all the mags dedicated to the industry and read every book on the industry I could get my hands on. Yes, I was a huge DC fan which made me just as bias as you Marvel Zombies (sorry, an old name we used to thrust at the folks who only noticed comics with the Marvel logos) are. But I was opened to everything. I took people's recommendations. I read stuff people told me were good or stuff I found on my own out of curiosity. I went back and purchased or read some of the classic stuff (like Chris Claremount and John Byrne's X-Men work of the late 70s and early 80s leading up to the Phoenix Saga--- that's the true peak of X-Men storytelling). I was introduced to comic book writers and artists and spoke with them. I experimented by reading non-super hero comic stories from smaller comic companies and checked out the foreign stuff as well. I even had my brief magna craze. This doesn’t make me some type of scholar on the subject but I did spend a good chunk of my early days interacting, talking and arguing folks who had a passion for comic books.

First of all, God bless Stan Lee for what he has done. But the worship of the man is so misplaced. He’s the Hugh Hefner of the comic book world just Like with Hef people know him as a celebrity figure, a cultural icon. But at least with Hef’s Playboy it was in many ways the first of its kind. Marvel however did not produce the first comic books. And superheroes existed in comic books decades before Marvel came around. So what did Lee do? He created new characters (with the few exceptions of the ones his company purchased such as Captain America and the Human Torch) and made them more relatable than the characters from DC. These superheroes were down to Earth folks who had insecurities and crappy jobs. He also placed most of his characters in real cities. Actually one city inparticular…New York. And he made sure that the New York in the comics represented as much as possible the real life New York in terms of landmarks and neighborhoods. Indeed it was a fresh approach for super hero comic books. But was it innovative? Perhaps. Regardless my point is that now every comic book company (including DC) write their superheroes the same way and have done so for the last 25 or more years. Marvel no longer has a monopoly in presenting super heroes as regular Joes just as DC no longer has a monopoly on superheroes in general. So what does Marvel do better now? Other companies approach their characters like that and some have even taken the concept of being a superhero to more sophisticated levels.

Marvel fans often still think that that company is reinventing the wheel. Truly during my years of really being interested in the comic genre, I never came across more close-minded fans than Marvel fans. They tended to be the last to try anything new and would buy the same old stuff over again. They were like Coke and McDonald’s fans, boasting about their numbers, boasting about being number one, championing their product as the best without really giving anyone else a taste. So yeah….we nicknamed them Marvel Zombies. It was a title that fit.

As well liked and respected as Stan Lee is no one thinks of him as a truly brilliant writer. He’s not put in the class of an Alan Moore, Frank Miler or Neil Gaiman. No one really recalls any great stories he did that lasted the test of time. What’s his biggest claim to fame as a writer? The death of Gwen Stacy? Hell, even during the late 60s and early 70s Lee and Marvel weren’t even responsible for the most acclaimed and social relevant superheroes story of that era. That honor goes to Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams’ Green lantern/Green Arrow stretch run. Lee couldn’t come close to writing something as good as that. Truth is he wasn’t much of a writer anyway which is why the Marvel Way approach (the method in which the artists draw the panels first and the writers came in later to fill in the words and dialogue) probably best suited him. And his creative genius over the last 20 years has come under more scrutiny as it becomes more apparent that the bulk of the credit should go to Jack Kirby. In fact if you ask people working in the industry who was the most important, Jack Kirby would beat Stan Lee in a vote. (Kirby is also much more well liked but that’s not exactly relevant).

So, no, Lee never pushed the artform to unimagined heights. Not artistically and certainly not economically considering comic books sales were better in the 1940s than they were in the 60s, 70s, 80, or 90s.

Marvel fans have not noticed (or just don’t care) that the company probably reached its creative peak in the early 80s when Claremont-Byrne were redefining the superhero group concept with X-Men, a young Frank Miller was shaking up things with Daredevil (which for the first time made that character relevant), Marv Wolfman’s Dark Tomb of Dracula (which introduced the character Blade), Byrne’s Fantastic Four, Walt Simonson’s Thor, etc. But around that time Jim Shooter started to take over at Marvel and made a mess of everything. A lot of the young talent Marvel had bolted the company and left for DC. They put together masterpieces like The New Teen Titans, Ronin, Man of Steel, Batman: Year One, Crisis of Infinite Earths, Omega Men, The Dark Knight, Camelot 3000. Then DC started hiring British newcomers like Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman who not only brought fresh approaches to the most established of DC heroes but also took writing to a new level with the Saga of The Swamp Thing, Sandman and The Watchmen.

And at the same time the independents were really taking chances and changing the look of the comic industry. Love and Rockets, Maus, Cerebus, Zot!, Miracle Man, American Flagg!, Spawn and later…Sin City, savage Dragon, Queen and Country, From Hell, 3000, Scott Penguin, etc.

Just like every industry the comic industry hands out awards and judges best works every year. Truth be told Marvel has been dominated on that front by DC and the independents over the last two decades (although I’m not exactly sure of the results the past few years). The Comic Buyers Guide Awards and the other mags have favored work from Marvel’s competitors. Outside of Alex Ross’ Marvels I’m not sure if the company has done anything groundbreaking that got industry insiders truly excited. To be fair DC hasn’t apparently produced as many great works this decade as the two previous ones. But at least as recently as the 90s they were still on top of their game’ the dry spell for Marvel has gone on for a much longer time. The sad thing is that this decade DC has closed the sales gaps with marvel. A couple of times they even beat marvel in sales. This would have been more satisfying if it had happened in the 80s and 90s when DC was putting out some classics. Now it appears to be in the same rut Marvel is. Yes, there are still some very good work out there from both companies when it comes to their superhero lines. But there hasn’t been much truly innovative work from either of them that causes the sort of media frenzy as Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns. Everything is a stunt now with the “death” of characters that we all know won’t stay dead for long.

 

And as for Power Man, he did not, as you suggested, have any impact on me. I recall what he looked like because I was deep into comics for about 15 years. I still recall how all of them look like. My problem with his portrayal has more to do with how black males are seen increasingly in comics. Almost all of them these days have shaved heads. Its lazy. Its as if the artists aren’t interested enough in studying black hairstyles or just want to save some time by making every black dude with a bald head or a closely cropped hairstyle. As is typical with me I want to see some diversity in how black males are portrayed, not have black men put in a box. I got into X-Men again for a minute when Jim Lee took over and created Bishop. I loved the long hairstyle Bishop had. It was rare for a black male character. The last time I saw Bishop in a comic a few years back some lazy ass artist had give him the shaved look. Someone had done the same for Black Panther too although I think that has changed since. So that’s why I object to the idea of Tyrese as Luke cage. Tyrese isn’t an impressive actor, Tyrese isn’t as physical in appearance as Luke cage and most of all Tyrese has one hairstyle and we all know what it is. If they were going to do a film about Power Man (and there is nothing about the character that makes him worthy of a film IMO) at least cast someone like Michael Jai White who kinda looks like the character.

There are a few good books out there about the industry but I would suggest Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics and also Reinventing Comics to get a good sense of what had occur over the past couple of decades.

 

I suppose. But for those who are stuck on the superhero adventures of the most well known characters they have this assumption that all the relevant stuff is happening strictly with the Big Two.

I am a DC fan but I don't buy hardly a thing from them anymore either. Nothing truly excites me. I'm somewhat turned off by the industry because it continues to play it safe. And the diversity of characters is still pretty lousy.

 

co-sign

This is absolutely true. As a teenager, I used to speak at thingies about the portrayal of women in comic books. I was kinda an activist. I bought some new stuff recently, and nothing really has changed since the 90's. I also noted that while there were a few more African American characters than in 1994, they still aren't getting much in the way of lines, and many of them still look like white men shaded in (something I always found lame).

The comic book industry really drags it's feet when it comes to diversity, far more so than any other type of entertainment. It's nowhere near caught up with movies, for instance. One quick & obvious reason for this can be seen in who gets hired by these companies -- I've met Black Men who were colorists, but how many are creators, writers, pencilers*? The industry is pathetically pale & male.

Nevertheless, I love it, and someday I'll change it all, singlehandedly. 8)












*for say, Marvel or DC. There are many EXCELLENT comic books created, written & drawn by Black Men, but rarely for the big two, or even Image, really.

 

For a taste of Independent comics read Miracleman (among others) written by Alan Moore

Black Panther as written by Christopher Priest (a BM)

The Crew written by Priest

The Monarchy by Doselle Young (a BM)