From Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin (which you should be reading):
This week's titles: X-Factor, X-Force, Mighty Avengers
Back in February, a press release came out saying that there would be a comic released based on Fall Out Boy. You know, the band. As if the world needed yet another comic book based on real life people stinking up the new comics rack (remember the old WWF and WCW comics?), it seemed that the Dabel Bros. Publishing was gung-ho about showing the band adventuring their way through comicdom (probably in an emo-tional way).
Leave it to the Simpsons to set things right with the world.
Turns out that the name Fall Out Boy has been owned for some time by those wonderful makers of the Simpsons. It also turns out that they don't think highly of a comic being released with a name they own by another publisher. So when the Simpsons lawyers called, the band backed away from the situation. The publisher is apparently still fighting to get it to go, but no one is really psyched about it anymore. They won't even be able to use the name Fall Out Boy for the cover - much like DC can't use the name Captain Marvel as a comic title (despite it being the name of one of their bigger heroes).
So everyone should be content to let this thing fade quickly and quietly from memory...until the band's drummer Andy Hurley apparently made a douche bag out of himself by giving an interview to Comic Book Resources saying that the project was never approved and sounded lame to him, even though he had apparently been all for it until the Simpsons thing started. So the publisher turns around and gets in a tizzy about that and now it looks like we really won't be getting a Fall Out Boy comic.
Believe me, my heart bleeds.
I'm a bit puzzled by the recent works on longtime writer Jeph Loeb. To me, Loeb's name always gave me pleasant memories of his workings with Tim Sale and even his lesser-known, yet still enjoyable run on the post-Age of Apocalypse X-Force. Before his exclusive signing with Marvel, I was enjoying most of his run on Superman/Batman and his credited episodes of the series Heroes on NBC have been fantastic. Good stuff, I would think.
Since his Marvel return, he's been hit-and-miss, with more of an emphasis on miss. I strayed away from Onslaught: Reborn not because of him, but because of Rob Liefeld's art and because it was an anniversary story that should never have been made. I'm sure it was good for what it was...or something like that. My first exposure was his Wolverine storyline "Evolution" which was pretty much abysmal. If you didn't catch it, check out the X-Axis' review of it. While Wolverine isn't one of my pulls, Casey faithfully reads it and shared with me the issues, and I had trouble getting through the whole thing. Blatant contradictions with numerous titles including X-Men and Cable & Deadpool made me shake my head. Never mind the ridiculousness of the whole thing - it was like the editors gave Loeb the go-ahead for anything, then had to go back and correct the details (like showing Feral and Thornn powered when they were victims of M-Day).
Somehow I missed issue #4 of Ultimates 3, but after reading Casey's copy of the issue, I have decided not only to skip the issue, but to drop Ultimates altogether. I have been reading Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate X-Men almost since the beginning of their runs. I followed both chapters of Millar and Hitch's Ultimates and am somewhat familiar with Ultimate Fantastic Four. The point here is that I'm quite familiar with the long-building continuity of the Ultimate universe. Loeb, however, has taken that and pretty much thrown it to the wind. It seems like he's decided exactly what he wants to do with which characters and to hell with what's happened before.
Examples of this in just four issues have been the fight with Venom (who has been missing since his debut in Ultimate Spider-Man and is just now returning to the picture), the unexplained arrivals of Black Panther and Valkyrie (who was a non-powered wannabe in Ultimates 2), the blatant romance between Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, the changing of Captain America to depressive, and the odd characterization of Hawkeye.
To me, the final clincher was the appearance of Pyro in issue #4 as a homicidal member of Magneto's Brotherhood. That characterization showed me that Loeb did not bother to see what Pyro had done in the title before. He just new that he had appeared, so he got his design and put him in the role he wanted. In actuality, when last we saw Pyro, he was a member of the X-Men and quite amazed to be on the team he was! He had secretly infiltrated the Mutant Liberation Front, but was quite on board with the X-Men. How he went from that to murderous psychopath member of the Brotherhood wasn't - and likely won't be - explained. It's Pyro, and Pyro is a villain. So there you go.
The writing in Ultimates 3 seems to be blatantly egotistical, and what kills me is that the editors seem to be turning a complete blind eye to it! As for me, though, I'm tired of questioning why I'm shilling three bucks a month whenever the book comes out for something I'm not enjoying. For the bigger picture, perhaps? Well, that obviously doesn't fit here. Loeb's got his own picture and that's that.
I say enough.
Michael Turner passed away last night at the age of 37. He had been battling cancer since the year 2000. For details, check out the CBR article. Personally, I always enjoyed his work, interior or covers.
As far as needless title launches go, I had to give it to DC with Titans - an ongoing with the old-school Titans joining together for no particular reason. Not a lot of setup - just a Titans: East teaser and there you have it!
My problem with this book (and why I decided not to add it to my list) was because the book really doesn't seem to matter. Nightwing is busy in his own book and in the Batman world. A big part of Flash's story in JLA has been his lack of time for his family (in Flash) and the JLA, let alone the Titans, yet in Justice League America #20 he rededicated himself to the league. Red Arrow also has a prominent role in the JLA where his story focused on his graduating into Green Arrow's place on the League - not with the Titans anymore. Donna Troy became a watcher of the Monitors with Kyle Rayner and Ray Palmer at the conclusion of Countdown. Beast Boy rejoined the Doom Patrol during the One Year Later gap and even became leader.
So does all that make Titans a book being put out simply to put a book out? Looks that way to me.
So then I come to the end of this week's Teen Titans #60 and I see that a certain member of the team's adventures will be continued in Terror Titans #1! The Terror Titans are the small group of young villains who have plagued the Titans recently (not to be mistaken for the villainous Titans: East from a few arcs ago). Do they really need their own six issue mini? Does the only Titan going over have enough star power to carry the book? Seems the overwhelming Titans editor thinks so. What's his name here? Ah...a Dan DiDio. Ever heard of him?
This is getting ridiculous. I'm going to be sticking with Teen Titans, thanks. Adult Titans and villain Titans don't particularly interest me. They're missing the point here.
I'm a big fan of team books. I really like the aspect of having an ensemble cast of characters coming together to fight for the good cause. If done well, you can have a group of heroes that normally wouldn't shine on their own (ever wonder why Rogue and Gambit series keep getting cancelled?) become a big thing as a group.
Of course, the more popular thing to do is to take your already established characters and shoehorn them together. That's cool - people love seeing their favorite heroes working together. But if you throw too many in, you run into a problem of telling consistent stories without having to stretch the limits of your threat. There's only so much that can challenge a group made up of several near-invulnerable heroes, after all.
In the Justice League, you have the big three - Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman - two Green Lanterns and the Flash. Never mind the rest of the team (Black Canary, Black Lightning, Vixen, Red Arrow, Hawkgirl and Red Tornado) - with just those six characters, you have the entire power core of the DC heroes. Who is going to stop them?
Once this realization came to me, I quit complaining about the constant villain team-ups. What else can you do against them?
Avengers has had this problem several times. The original line-up featured three of Marvel's biggest solo stars (Iron Man, Hulk, Thor) and added Captain America three issues later. Once the series got going, however, the three originals were gone - replaced by side-characters Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. From this point on, Avengers dug its own character niche in the Marvel Universe - certain characters were Avengers - and that was that.
JSA is like that now. JLA seems to be on the fence about it. On the one hand, the book heavily pushes the more unknown characters: Black Canary is the leader, Black Lightning has a substantial role, Vixen has a long-running subplot, Hawkgirl and Red Arrow are bumping uglies. On the other, the book still seems to long for the Grant Morrison days of jam all big characters into the book. Morrison made it work, though, and soon added lesser names like Plastic Man and Steel. JLA has seen two big villain team-ups thus far.
Perhaps it's because I fondly remember a League featuring two major characters - Batman and Martian Manhunter - and a load of second-stringers and nobodies. Even when the book was changed from comedy back to action by Dan Jurgens just before Doomsday, the League was made up of the same cast of lower talents. Over those 70+ issues, though, certain characters became core Leaguers - even if the DCU proper didn't think too highly of them. I think that's what the League could use now. Dip into the vast pool of DC heroes (if any survive the usual Crisis cullings) and get yourself a base of heroes that can come in and out of the scene. Rotate your leader and have them put out a call, with who knows showing up. I would like to see something like that, with the lesser heroes actually having a challenge, rather than seeing what's going on now.
Spotted this over at Every Day is Like Wednesday which sums up my thoughts on DC's weekly-book crossover to mega-event shenanigans.
"You might remember that particular creative team from Gotham Underground, the series that tied-in to Salvation Run, which was a tie-in to Countdown, which was a prequel to Final Crisis, although the writer of Final Crisis recently disavowed it as such."Exactly.
