Goodbye, Marvel Comics

[shapinglight]

Took a momentous (well, not in the grand scheme of things, but you know what I mean) decision today and decided to kick my X-Men comics habit to the kerb for good.

Reasons why behind cut.



It wasn't that hard, actually. My favourite X-Men character is Magneto - has been, ever since Chris Claremont gave him the Holocaust survivor origin story back in the '80s. Since then, the character has bounced from hero to anti-hero to outright villain (which is how he started off in the 60s) and back again at regular intervals, depending on the writer/editor. There were lots of things about his story I liked - notably his relationship with Rogue (in which I was pretty much alone, I suspect), and his relationships with his children (before Marvel ruined that with a stupid retcon)- and plenty of things I didn't like, such as when he got too megalomaniacal, when Hitler comparisons were made, etc.

Details of his past were kind of vague, until Magneto: Testament came out. That established him once and for all (so I thought) as a Jew, and detailed his suffering under the Nazis quite graphically (literally, I suppose).

I really did believe after that that Marvel would - even if they made the character a villain again - take a certain amount of care with him and at least treat his origin story with respect. Now, however, there are rumours that in the latest Marvel-wide event, Secret Empire, he's going to be revealed as having been a Hydra agent all along. Okay, they are apparently trying to make out that Hydra aren't based on the Nazis, but of course they are, for which see the first Captain America movie - not to mention endless old-school Marvel comics. So I'm kind of pissed off by this. It doesn't sit well with me at all, and it smacks way too much of the very unpleasant current zeitgeist.

'Course, the rumour could be a fake-out, or totally wrong, but I've decided not to stick around to find out. Finally, after most of my adult life, I am done with these things.

About time really, I guess?

Comments

[rebcake]

Urgh. I am not okay with a zeitgeist in which fascism is okay. Is that so difficult for people. That said, I loved "Starship Troopers" which I saw as anti-fascist, but was apparently too subtle for some people? IDK.

I haven't been reading Marvel Universe comics for awhile. I only read a few comics, period. But Claremont's run on X-men was so, so important to me at the time. However, I just got my alumni magazine, and it turns out that the new-ish editor in chief, Alex Alonso, is also an alumnus of my very left leaning alma mater, from roughly the same era. I find it hard to believe that he'd have a fascist agenda, but that's not to say that we shouldn't all be paying attention.

Here's the article, which focuses more on inclusion of the underrepresented than anything: http://news.ucsc.edu/2017/01/alonso-axel.html

[shadowkat]

Right there with you.

here were lots of things about his story I liked - notably his relationship with Rogue (in which I was pretty much alone, I suspect), and his relationships with his children (before Marvel ruined that with a stupid retcon)

Not the only one. I liked the Rogue/Magneto relationship -- in part because they could actually touch, and had a lot in common. (One of my favorite comics was Rogue and Magneto's first meeting and romance in the Savege Land - circa 1980s/1990s.)

My difficulty with the comics was I was really enjoying the team-up of Cyclops, White Queen, Magneto, and Magic. I found them to be interesting and ambiguous. Also there was a lot of in-depth character exploration going on there. But that got blown out of the water, when the writer did this weird reboot, which destroyed the X-men in favor of the less interesting Inhumans...in order to sync the comics with the movie/television universe. (I wish they didn't do that.)

My favorite characters in that series are pretty much dead or retconned. I don't know why the writers did that. (favorites? Cyclops, Magneto, Emma Frost, Beast, Gambit, Phoenix/Jean Grey (older version), Rogue, Mystique, Xavier and Shadowcat. I liked Storm and Wolverine, but felt the writers white-washed both characters in the last few years, losing some of their complexity in the process - they were too self-righteous.)

But, on the plus side? I'm no longer spending any money on comics. Sort of hard to care about comics, when they write out your favorite character(S).

[shadowkat]

I'd agree, Starship Troopers was very anti-fascist, it was sort of a satire. Similar to Total Recall. I think the same director did both. I'm right, Paul Verhoven, he also did Robocop. Just googled him, he's from the Netherlands or Dutch. And I felt he was anti-facist. His movies seem to be a statement against fascism.

But I guess you can read them another way.

I also adored the Chris Claremont run on the X-men. It was important to me as well, and why I fell in love with the comics. None of the other writers quite grabbed me the same way. Adored Claremont and Jim Lee's run -- which was 80s-90s, I think.

[rahirah]

Marvel has been making really bad character decisions lately, in the name of... I dunno, shock value, I guess. I don't read any of their titles, but if I did, I'd be thinking seriously about dropping them about now.

[shapinglight]

Urgh. I am not okay with a zeitgeist in which fascism is okay. Is that so difficult for people. That said, I loved "Starship Troopers" which I saw as anti-fascist, but was apparently too subtle for some people? IDK.

I have never seen Starship Troopers so can't comment on that. Is it something I should watch, do you think?

However, I just got my alumni magazine, and it turns out that the new-ish editor in chief, Alex Alonso, is also an alumnus of my very left leaning alma mater, from roughly the same era. I find it hard to believe that he'd have a fascist agenda, but that's not to say that we shouldn't all be paying attention.

I very much doubt that Axel Alonso has a fascist agenda. I doubt that even the writer of this Secret Empire thing does. But it does look to me like they're both guilty of extremely questionable taste in pursuit of shocking storylines. The writer is someone called Stephen Spencer and all I know about him is when that guy punched the white supremacist Richard Spencer in the face, he said it was the wrong thing to do. He's also been writing Captain America as an agent of Hydra for a while, which is really awful too given the character's origins, though I believe that was partly a fake-out, which doesn't make it any less in questionable taste, of course.

I dunno. I think you can sell comics without selling out one of your core characters (which Captain America is) like that, and I know I'm not alone in thinking it. I may well be alone in being scared what they might do with Magneto if they'll do that to Captain America, hence my jumping ship without waiting to see whether the whole thing has just been overblown. I've got to the point of deciding I'd rather not know.

All this aside, Marvel were doing quite well I thought. They've had a slew of new titles featuring female/POC leads. They've even replaced long-time characters like Thor and Iron Man with female/POC characters. I don't know how successful this has been (I have a vague impression that they're about to cancel a whole bunch of books and reboot yet again) but you have to give them props for trying.

[shapinglight]

My difficulty with the comics was I was really enjoying the team-up of Cyclops, White Queen, Magneto, and Magic. I found them to be interesting and ambiguous. Also there was a lot of in-depth character exploration going on there. But that got blown out of the water, when the writer did this weird reboot, which destroyed the X-men in favor of the less interesting Inhumans...in order to sync the comics with the movie/television universe. (I wish they didn't do that.)

Yes, I enjoyed that iteration of the X-Men myself and was really pissed off with Marvel when they ended it - and even more so when they retconned Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch as not Magneto's children after all then denied it had anything to do with trying to get the comics in sync with the MCU.

Glad I'm not the only one who liked Rogue/Magneto anyway.

[shapinglight]

Yeah, I really don't know what they think they're doing. I do know that to them, making Magneto more villainous by giving him Nazi sympathies is probably not something they'll lose sleep over. I just don't want to see it, however, so I'm bailing.

[shadowkat]

I enjoyed that iteration of the X-Men myself and was really pissed off with Marvel when they ended it - and even more so when they retconned Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch as not Magneto's children after all then denied it had anything to do with trying to get the comics in sync with the MCU.

Wait, what??? I thought that they'd kept that iteration. The reason the movies ret-conned them as not being Magnetos...was Marvel/Disney doesn't have the "movie" rights to the X-men, Fox held on to those rights, which Marvel sold to Fox to develop the previous X films.

Apparently Marvel decided to punish X-men fans and Fox both...by ret-conning their comics to match the Marvel/Disney movie verse?? Which made no sense to me, since they are making money (royalty payments) off of Fox's films.

It reminds me a little of the Dark Horse fight with the group (whose name I forget) that was doing the Angel comics. (Hee, ironically Whedon was caught in the middle of that fight too, just as he's indirectly in the middle of this one...since he created the Inhumans and ret-conned Scarlet Witch, because he couldn't do the X-men in the movies.)

Had the same result for me at any rate - I just eventually stopped reading the comics, mainly because the characters and verse diverged too greatly from what I loved.

In regards to the Marvel verse? I cancelled Marvel Agents of Shield from the DVR. I'll still watch the movies, because I never really read the Avengers comics and for the most part they aren't that associated with the X-men. But I'm skipping anything to do with the Inhumans. Their insistence on making the comics match the television series and films...lost me. They'd have been better off if they took the same tact that Fox had, which was letting the movies, television series, and comics be separate verses and not connected in any way. Yeah, it may bring in some of the movie audience, but you are losing the long-time readers...

[lokifan]

Totally agree. the Captain America thing is horrible and anti-Semitic, but making the most famous Jewish character and only famous Holocaust survivor they've got into a Nazi is so unbelievably gross.

[shapinglight]

Wait, what??? I thought that they'd kept that iteration. The reason the movies ret-conned them as not being Magnetos...was Marvel/Disney doesn't have the "movie" rights to the X-men, Fox held on to those rights, which Marvel sold to Fox to develop the previous X films.

No, they changed it in the comics too.

[shapinglight]

It is, though the writer currently dealing the most with Magneto, Cullen Bunn, has been being very sarcastic on Twitter with people assuming they know what's going to happen when they don't.

But I haven't changed my mind.