Same. The only reason I check in occasionally is to laugh at the sheer number of unintelligent people making fools of themselves online. It's better than reading any comic since the early 90s.
Honestly, number 4 is a side effect of too many romance plots that add nothing to the story itself, just the writers usually self inserting themselves as the MC.
@@dhmc45 Totally with you we go with examples of course like Spider-Man. Peter is a man who to get physical has to have something emotional with the girl, but since he was separated from MJ he has become an out-of-character womanizer, just ew an uncertain self and another is Batman, the modern Batman does not ew to get married and all that nonsense but the writers follow that he has to fall in love but he contributes something nothing in the end goes that the refrigerator girl and an example of an uncertain self was Paul dini connle of Bruce and Zatanna we all know that tldo started with him and look at his fanfiction when he was little
I want actual editors with spines hired. Ones that throw back asinine scripts, that tell artists to scrap a page and redo it because the design is garbage, that's willing to fire someone for wasting the company's time making propaganda instead of making something that sells.
I wish for continuity editors. How can characters have their own series and be in a team book at the same time without reprecussions affecting the person in neither book? Back in the day, Wolverine was called out for being in Madripoor and not helping the X-Men; then, he got ambushed because he was too tired (Uncanny 251). Now he fights on 3 different teams, without discussing it with any team...
My biggest issue is *mundanity* Too many books that have guess what: characters sitting around, eating food and talking. Being on dates or on the phone (yes, Jon Kent books). We read these books for escapism and adventure, action, not mundane bullshit *you* do every day.
Jon Kent: Who has time for saving the universe, protecting Earth from enemies domestic, interplanetary or interdimensional when I can post on my Twitter account sitting at Starbucks?
Spider-Man: Paul forgets to fasten his seat belt and flys through the windshield. Comes out in December 100 pages and it's just nothing but him dying in multiple ways.
Paul experiments on Jackpot super device and it teleports to a dimension where he constantly watches his “children” fade away over and over for all eternity. His father laughs at him. Mary Jane believes he was a false being like their “children”. She tells Peter, he forgives her, but says she needs to rebuild his trust in her.
Everything has to be gay, there is entirely too many Spider Men and Green Lanterns, and the writers killing off well known characters for their new lame ass creations.
@@khiclark31 Been saying the same thing for years. Name was already taken when he was created - if you are a professional writer, you gotta be able to come up with your own stuff. Standing on the shoulders of those who came before you doesn't make you great. Just makes you a copy-cat.
@@sebastianstark8517it made sense when he was first created, as he was literally filling Peter's shoes in the Ultimate universe. But out of that in the 616 it's nonsensical
@@egonnn244 it was supposed to be in reference to the overly long comic book covers. Kamala Harris gave a 5 minute evasive answer to a simple question starting with “so I was raised in a middle class family”. The joke is that if her answer was the sub for a WW book, that’d be REALLY long
I stopped reading comics every day like I used to around 2016 and when i picked up reading again i went crazy thinking about how much I've missed and how much i need to catch up on. Looks like i haven't missed too much. I'm just going to stick to the eras i enjoy.
There's 20 Supermen, 10 Batmen, a dozen Flashes, Captain Americas, Iron Men, and a hundred Lanterns. Green Arrow has a bunch of Arrows and an army of Canaries. Every book is this giant family ensemble and they all feel exactly the same: Completely meaningless, since even if a character dies, they have a lineup of identical clones to take over.
@@jrpgnation6375 see that is where the multiverse could be used instead of making multiple versions of every character. Do an Earth with no super heroes but maybe the Earth is invaded by aliens and normal people have to fight them. Not normal Bruce Wayne or normal Hal Jordan. Normal new characters. Maybe a steam punk Earth or an Earth overrun with zombies. If you're going to do a super hero Earth then. Do all new characters and not rehashes of imd characters.
Wes, I love it when you lose it like this! You are channeling my thoughts and frustrations, but you do it in such an entertaining way. Of the five things you listed, the one that makes me the most nuts is the proliferation of "super-families". It's shows a complete lack of thought and originality. Everyone from the top down at the big two is just phoning it in. To put things in perspective, I remember fondly when I was boy how excited I would get when the new issue of Spider-Man hit the stands. There was that month's anticipation between issues that made it magical to snatch that Spidey book off the rack when it appeared! I would race home to read it. And then start counting the days to the next issue.
1) events and reboots 2) writers headhunted from fanfic social media who don't like the genre but want into the industry 3) killing or otherwise replacing established characters with dei reskins & self inserts 4) the shipping culture influence and sudden gay conversions 5) multiversal madness. What was once an amazing tool for alternate takes on established characters has just become another gimmik
Variant covers. When I originally started collecting comic books a variant cover meant something special. It meant that the book would be something epic, mind-blowing and potentially game-changing. These days every Tom Dick and Jane have variant covers, you get some books that have over a hundred of them and that's just ridiculous, I'm surprised it hasn't killed the industry already and it drives me nuts
It almost did back in the late 90's. They started focusing on "Collector's Comics" (#1's, death issues, first appearance issues & variant covers) They flooded and crashed the market, Marvel went bankrupt and sold off the X-Men & F4 to Fox, Spider-Man to Sony & Hulk to Universal to survive. And now they're doing it again. Nobody seems to understand you literally cannot industrialize fandom or collecting
Things driving me away from comics: 1. Stories where the characters sit around and tells another character the story, and the only action is flashbacks or someone changing positions. 2. Multiple pages with nine to twelve headshots of characters talking. 3. Boring ass stories. 4. Books being many months late.
@garfieldsbizzareadadventure5758 I honestly would have thought that would be a parody; a joke made by an artist and writer. That's an actual thing. It's so laughably bad. Motor cycle, and muscle car? Makes sense. Not this.
5 - Placing the issue number on the bottom of the cover 4 - Paper quality stinks 3 - Tom King 2 - One More Day is still canon 1B - Decompressed storytelling 1A - Marvel and DC cater to the vocal minority
1A is actually not real. There is no one who buys these new comics, they're being pushed out because they're getting government money, in other words YOUR money to pump this political trash out/
1B is the big one. In the 80s and early 90s almost every X-Men comic could stand on its own, even if it was part of an ongoing storyline. Almost every issue was a good jumping on point.
@@KakasciiNo we didn’t. They just teased with it for the nth time as they have done since OMD. We were just dumb enough to believe that it was different this time, but it wasn’t.
@@davidgantenbein9362 we are not dumb we are just hopefull suckers... atleast we have a new what if in the new ultimate universe it ai t as bad as amazing lol
You pretty much hit the nail on the head for me as far as my complaints. So I’ll just keep my list to three. 1) enough with the mantle swaps and variations of characters. 2) enough with 3+ company wide “events “ a year, 3)enough with sympathetic villains and dirtbag heroes. It’s been done to death. It’s not clever at this point.
Inversion of; - canon - morality - ethics - psychology - sexuality - religion & occultism. - character origins IE: Nightcrawler forsakes his religion to create his own, becomes a gleeful killer and now his parents are lesbians.
@@vernonhampton5863 how about the x-men acting like a cult trying to abduct and indoctrinate Franklin Richard into their Xenophobic island run by a high council made up of whom?? The drug induced suicide orgies for reincarnation did it for me And Beast becoming a sociopathic spook for the mutant CIA? Scott going Poly cuckhold to keep Jean as Wolverine is simping? So much subversion for inversion
1.) No more fundamental changes of characters, specifically race, gender, sexual orientation, age, or the character's purpose or core beliefs. This would be in the main universe, 616 for Marvel or Earth Prime universe in DC. They can do whatever they want in their Ultimate or Elseworlds universe, that's totally fine. 2.) Writing and art need to be at the very least, fairly decent,...and, at best, outstanding. No more mediocre to trash writing and stories. No more political or alternate lifestyle agenda forced stories. And, no more crappy, looking like it's traced or blatantly 3-D rendered, horrific art.
There's so many things, event bloat and constant tie ins, too many duplicate heroes, no stakes of death, replacement characters, but two of the things that annoy me that I don't think people will mention are: 1. Pacing: Horrible, so slow and you can go easily three issues without real story progression 2. 0 progression: I want characters to progress in their lives. Im even fine if characters get old and retire, i just want something to happen.
@@jacob2389Finally!!! someone's says it!!! Can we stop with all this " Well their just world building "👷♀️ 👷♂️ 🌎 BS 🤬 let's advance this frickin story already!!! build on that bunch a idiot's 🤦🏾♂️. It would be like watching Keanu Reeves in John Wick film but all he does is eat a panini sandwich 🥪 in a deli for 40 minutes while having meaningless conversations about what might happen at a future date 🤣🤦🏾♂️🤣
There's a total imbalance with aging up characters and a huge inconsistancy in the way they're drawn and characterized - it's all over the place and defies logic. So many missed opportunitis to have beloved heros actually grow and mature with the legacy readers! How old is Cyclops meant to be now - in his late seventies at least!
I feel like right now and for probably the last 12-15 years or so, can all be summed up by lack of talent and just sucking… & a complete disregard for Canon and who the characters have always been. I’m gonna say it really started with one more day and Joe Quesada not being able to process his own divorce without ruining the lives of the characters he was interested with.
You should try the manga titles, Wes some of them have very long titles like I leveled up my powers in the next life in order to get with the cool girl who is my demon boss! Now that’s a long title, and I just made it up but it’s similar to what’s out there.
My list: 1-) Marvel don't allow 616 Spider-man be with MJ again and grow as a character. Wells run was a huge letdown. 2-) The X-men were ruined completely in past years. These guys can be everything in nowadays but not are heroes anymore. And I don't see any way to fix the franchise at this point. 3-) Heroes and villains being very alike in nowadays. Heroes can be selfshes and took very questionable actions and the villains don't are true evil just misguided persons. All they are antiheroes in these days and this sucks so much. 4-)Heroes desconstruction. I'm so tired of this. Dc just can't learn with your past mistakes and move on. They insist in make dark and edge reinventions of your classic heroes. 5-) Movies changing the canon of the comics. More and more the Marvel 616 universe are becoming more similar to the MCU and this make zero sense. And a special mention for Tom King. I cannot stand your shitty comics anymore.Your writing is the worst. Just kick this guy out of DC already.
Yea the amount of human Green Lanterns, too many Flash’s, Robins and every other hero, just make new heroes. Milking the same characters, same IP for decades, just create new things, there’s just nothing new.
We need a Survivor Series type of poll in order to narrow things down to the top 5 grievances. You can run it as an election event since we’re on our way there too. Mine: 1. Too many self insert stories 2. Too many redundant characters 3. Too many events / crossovers / multiple titles that require only one. 4. Multiverse - Lack of Continuity 5. Forced diversity
Batman stories are exactly the same. Again and again. Batman faces a villain, who has reinvented himself. He is beaten, pushes away the bat family, driven out of Gotham, he regains his confidence, returns to Gotham, brings together the bat family. Realising they’re not his weakness but his greatest strength, to then defeat the villain and promise a new age for the bat family. Until another villain resurfaces who has reinvented himself. Batman is beaten, pushes away the bat family, driven out of Gotham, he regains his confidence, returns to Gotham, brings together the bat family. Realising they’re not his weakness but his greatest strength, to then defeat the villain and promise a new age of the bat family. Then we start the cycle all over again, As well the constant pandering to a minority of a minority of people that don’t buy comics, the ‘modern audience” doesn’t exist. Dc has sacrificed all its good will. From new 52, to rebirth, to 5g to new frontier. I’ve no confidence constant reboots and I won’t spend the money. Turning every character gay to tick a box even though there has been no hint of being gay for 30 years.
🤣🤣🤣 I'm dying. I'm not even a big D.C.or Batman fan and I figured this out recently 😂 I bought the Chip Zdarsky failsafe run just to see what Batman was about it was awful 🤦🏾♂️ Loved Jorge Jimenez on art but the story was just awful I still want my money back for those 4 issue's...
Why the character’s sexuality is such a huge focus now. I just want a good story with some action. Also I’m sick of writing for the trades. I’d like more stories in a 12 month period than just 2. 2 mediocre ones at that.
No particular order: Once a character is outed as LGBT that becomes their entire existence and is often handled with kid gloves because God forbid DC/Marvel piss off the activists who probably don't read the comics. Jon Kent suffers the worst from this. Any new original LGBT characters you have to expect this kind of treatment as well as coming off rather stereotypical. "Writing for the trade" is not new and there are some benefits to that format, but you can tell sometimes with how much the writer just pads the issues with nothing really happening. Tom Taylor's mainstream books are very guilty of this with him coasting on feel good fan service and pretty art. At least have it feel every issue has something to offer to the story overall. Plucking elements from adaptions and just shoving them into comic canon with no explanation. I have no problem with characters from the cartoons/movies/etc entering the comics or the comics taking ques from adaptations. There's a right and wrong way to do this however without ruining established canon. The Teen Titans suffer from this a lot usually with writers trying to force 03 cartoon elements without making much sense. And that Red X fumble no one talks about anymore. Or how everything Marvel did stared feeling like the MCU. Lenticular covers. They give me a headache. Whenever DC or Marvel feels they need to get a writer who matches the character in some way, i.e. black writer writes black characters or only women write female characters half the time they find the most incompetent examples. Gabby Rivera's America Chavez is a prime example and what made so many people not take this character seriously. Its also why some female led books become slice-of-life books instead of superhero books because that's what the female comic writer may be more use to.
If these comic book companies could make alternate universes worth a dang many of the side characters could be seperated in these universe they fit well in....
If I had control of DC I would end all current titles. I would then release 3 titles (all of them 48 pages) published monthly for one year before adding any new titles. The first 3 titles would be Detective Comics, Action Comics and Wonder Comics. Year 2 would introduce 6 more titles 3 heroes and 3 villains. Green Lantern, Flash, Cyborg, Darkseid, Lex Luthor and Bane. One can only dream.
1) They trying to compete with isekai manga with the long titles 😂. 2) I am still pissed over Wonder Woman’s origin change. Nothing wrong with the clay 3) Ugh I hate the fab covers with the low tier interior art. 4) I think Spider-Man is the worse. That’s a character that should be one and one only. 5) it is getting out of hand with milestones. I want to add revisiting popular storylines like Civil War and Secret Invasion.
1. Referring to comics series as 'Seasons.' 2. Comic characters shown wearing covid masks. 3. Characters in comics staring at their phones. 4. Mary Jane Watson. 5. Artist redesigning classic characters to resemble hack actors who will be gone in five years/half a dozen sequels.
I agree entirely with you Wes on all these. My biggest moan perhaps is the continual use now of creators I have never even heard of. Marvel and DC have so much talent they could turn to, but never offer them any work. Nearly all of the top artists associated with them both now are only hired for covers. What happened to Russell Dauterman doing interiors for example? The only conclusion you can come to, is that its purely cost cutting as they don't want to pay that talent what they should be earning any more.
1)Comic Book Names - Oh come on Wes. You mean to say you wont read "Batman:The Long Halloween:The Last Halloween:The Next Halloween:Before The Long Halloween"?!? >:) I personally am looking forward to "Wolverine:The Xman Who Lived: On a Farm:In Springtime:With Jean Grey:Who was killed by Sabertooth:In the field:With his Claws:To piss Wolverine Off" That will be the BEST BOOK EVER 2)Retconning Origins:Ah yes. Retconning. The most pointless task ever in the history of comics. "Did you know that the people killed in crime alley were NOT Thomas and Martha Wayne?! No! They were body doubles because Thomas and Martha were secretly spies working on a special ops assignment that went wrong and caused them to be held captive for decades. They were also secretly working on a chemical compound to use on other spies to drive them insane so they would reveal other government secrets and it was being housed at Acme Chemicals.... YES! Find out that Bruce and Joker are actually BROTHERS as Martha became pregnant during one of their missions with another mans child!! 🙄Only to have that all retconned six months later under the guise of Bruce being manipulated by Ras Al Ghul or Riddler, or Penguin or someone.... Because someone goes "Nahhh. Thats STUPID! I have a BETTER RETCON..." 3)Bait and Switch Art - Well, you said it yourself Wes. The artists are the draw, so they have them do one or two issues to get people hooked and then swap them out with cheaper flavor of the week artists. Easy way to stop that. Dump the book. You got your couple of issues with the good artists, now dump it. Unless the storyline is so compelling you can't......doubt thats the case right now. 4)Super-family overkill - I am waiting with baited breath for the Ambush Bug Family. Maybe the Willie Lumpkin Family? The Sentry Family? How about the Jay KnockyourMama Family? The Bernard Family? How about the Jason Todd Family that way the Bat Family can extend out even further. Heres hoping that Tom King takes all the Families and makes a Godfather kind of mini series where they try and kill each other off. Can you picture Dick Grayson walking into a room and screaming "SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND!!" and he throws a Batterang at one of the Flash Family!! or Batman talking to one of the Shazam Family "I am giving you an offer you can't refuse...." >:) Bruce Corleone!! 5)Stupid Anniversary Issues. Well. How elese will Marvel and DC get work for these talent-less hacks? Don't you know the story of Posion Ivys Neighbors best friends mailman HAS to be told?!?! You have to buy it because if you dont read that LAST page you wont have a clue whats going on going forward!! Whats pissing me off 1)Stories with no direction: You have all these books going on that have absolutely meaningless plots. Seriously. Absolute Power is a convoluted MESS. Spiderman just meanders(Can we PLEASE get to the "Death of Paul" already...everybody is screaming for it), X-men is directionless, FLASH is directionless. I can not think of ONE book from the big two that have any sort of actual storyline that anyone cares about. 2)Pointless characters - See above. PAUL. What in the blue blazes! I think the last time I saw a character that absolutely pissed off the fanbase THIS much was PROBABLY..you know..I cannot think of one. Every Spider whatever. Spider Boy?!? REALLY?!? WHY. Every VENOM. Again...WHY?!? ElectraDevil, Jay KnockYourMama, Bernard, EVERY "New" X Man. All these, as you put it "Self Insert" Characters that keep showing up and throwing the main characters in the back of the bus! Its enough. If you want to write Self Related Fan Fiction, go do it, but Marvel and DC have to stop thinking we want to PAY for it. 3)Event Books - Enough will you. The events are all lame and lead to nothing but the NEXT Event. At this point does anyone really CARE. Does anyone think ANY event will have any lasting impact?!? I am sure once Marvel and DC see fatigue setting in they will "Reboot" the universe again. 4)Flavor of the day politics in the books. Quick, pull out the podium! I'm using Spider Man as my platform!! You know what it all reminds me off? How the books in the 40s all came out with anti Nazi books. Cap Punches Hitler. How often do you see those books reprinted in 2024? All these idiots are doing is making sure the books will sit in the long boxes next to that 100 copies of the Foil Embossed copy of Xmen from the 90s. These characters are supposed to be timeless. The Stories are supposed to be LARGER THAN LIFE. If you think I want to pick up this weeks Batman and see him spend the book admonishing a local merchant for not using someones preferred pronouns....you're crazy. "Batman Shames Joker for not calling Harley They Them"..... Nope. Next. 5)Books that take 10 years to finish - Seen the latest issue of "The Last Days of Lex Luthor" yet? How about the latest issue of "Batman 89 - Echos" Seriously, what the heck?! How about just DONT solicit a book until its READY?!?! The desperation level is just UNREAL. I have seen this a lot over the years and you'd think by now SOMEONE would fix it. Half the times I dont know if the books been CANCELED, Lost, I missed an issue or WHAT?!? The funny thing is, if this happened on Detective or Batman or Spiderman...the world would probably go into MELTDOWN. It makes me leery of even picking up Mini Series anymore because this just HAPPENS and nobody says a word. and of course theres the whole lets gender swap/orientation swap some character out of the clear blue. But at this point, you just have to dump the title when they do it.
Kenneth Rockfort was on sideways for new age of heroes and actually did 9 of the 13 issues and did the entire last arc. I think he was the most consistent of all the new age of heroes.
Re: Titles: The Phenomenon: Book 3! It's a trope amusingly called "Colon Cancer". There used to be a website that catalogued this stuff, thousands of 'em. Loved this show, btw.
@@LibraGamesUnlimited There's nothing boring about Pre-Crisis Superman. Just read some stuff written by Martin Pasko,Cary Bates,Marv Wolfman,Elliot S. Maggin and Paul Kuppeberg. All them were very superior to John Byren. Byrne ruined Superman mythos and make him a Marvel character. Superman supposed to be better than this.
1. Constant reboots 2. Multiple characters having the same code name at the same time 3. No title on the first page(or at all) 4. Writing for the trades and taking multiple issues to tell a one issue story 5. Too many events I can tell Wes isn’t into Coheed & Cambria. It’s Amory(not Armory) and those long ass titles are the titles of their albums and naming the comics those names tells you which album that arc corresponds to.
Paying the marketing department more than the actual creatives. Dude, you have to put a trigger warning before showing Tom Taylor's face. I reflexively punched the screen.
Dude. I just turned 50. All of the energy that jumped off the page when I was buying image books in the 90s is gone. Those stories weren’t great but they were so fun and captivating. Spawn, Gen 13, Witchblade, The Maxx, Pitt, Crimson. What has replaced them? Manga and a gigantic lack of visual storytelling.
Wes: I FEEL LIKE IM TAKING CRAZY PILLS HERE! i agree with pretty much all these criticisms but my major problem is the quality of the floppies and collected editions. Glued binding and shit quality paper. To me the golden standard for collected editions (both paperback, hardcover, and deluxe hardcover) are Image, Boom, and Dark Horse.
Not giving enough (or often any) work to great creators who are still ready and willing to do great work, e.g., Jerry Ordway, Ron Frenz, Tom Grummett, Rick Leonardi, Jon Bogdanove etc. With regards to writers, Chris Claremont, JM DeMatteis, Roger Stern and David Michelinie should all be in regular books. I could think of more…
I have to admit the weird names will draw me in at the store, although I haven't been comic shopping in quite a while. I have bought plenty of manga though.
Over here in Brazil the American Dollar is about 5.50 of our own currency. Add to the problem the terrible payments practiced here and the each day higher cost of living. I strive to keep Comics very close to me due to the great passion I have for the media, but that hás affected severely our readership over here.
I must although state that that is a problem regardless of the comic media. The problems displayed in the vídeo are enormous factors on why many don't even bother to try to keep up with current comics. What is most sold over here are reprints.
Besides comics having "The Message", uglification, and race swaps, here's the 5, off the top of my head, that annoy me: 1. Comic covers parodying or making "homages" to classic comic covers especially the ones based on the Crisis issue of Superman holding dead Supergirl. 2. Resurrecting dead characters and killing off heroes for shock value. 3. Company-wide multiversal events. 4. All of DC revolving around Batman 5. Superhero no-kill rules because killing the villain is being just as bad as them.
1: To many versions of everyone. 2: No character consistency. 3:All political nonsense especially far left agenda's. 4:Relationships being dismantled for no reason. 5:Comically bad artwork.
Wes, Amory Wars is based off the albums produced by Claudio Sanchez's band Coheed and Cambria. It's been a thing since the early 2000s. The albums and comics are connected, I believe it's the name of one of Coheed's first records.
It's becoming clear that the industry now primarily lets women write female characters. This would be fine if they were putting talented writers on these books, but we often see people like Leah Williams or a generic 'Stephanie' instead.
I’m sick of the cover(s) being so much better than the interiors (see: that new Spirits of Vengeance book). Give me a quality story and art on something at the big two!! Remember when covers were indicative of what was inside? All these homage covers are of when covers reflected the interiors of the book! 60 issue crossovers. Blood hunt sucked. Absolute Power sucks. Not because of bad concepts so much as the fact that they aren’t even linear stories anymore. Blood hunt wouldn’t have been so bad if you could get the mini series and then pick and choose which other stories to read, but if you just read blood hunt, it didn’t make sense, same with absolute power!!! Variant interiors. Did Dr. Strange get gutted by Blade or not? That was the back breaker for me there. If you are going to do mature books, you already have a mature imprint, MAX, and those aren’t flipping polybagged!! No more editors taking something that could have been cool and blowing it up into an event because the schedule needs one that month!! I could go on and on and on…
Thanks for another excellent discussion, Mr. Wes. A few things that grind my gears from modern comics: 1. Trying to be ALAN MOORE/Deconstruction because you think you are deep: I loathe writers who - instead of embracing the fantastic nature of the genre and delivering a fulfilling superhero yarn - want to copy ALAN MOORE with something they think is deep, like TOM KING's usage of JENNY SPARKS, a character that has a colorful century-long history in her original universe...and King makes her a cursing, brooding caricature of herself just for some social commentary about the early 2000s. 2. Creating New characters while ignoring established ones: X-MEN FROM THE ASHES. The upcoming NEW CHAMPIONS. X-MEN: CHILDREN OF THE ATOM. We see writers brought in and, instead of using the great host of characters already established in the fictional universes, they have to create NEW characters - that will be thrown to the wasteside again for yet more pointless new characters. I'd rather see creative teams focus on characters that haven't been used for a while instead of creating a character that will be used for one storyarc and vanish into limbo never to be used again. 3. Wrong genre writers: I know the best writers are supposed to be versatile, but what DC and MARVEL both need are SUPERHERO COMIC WRITERS, folks who want to craft superhero characters into superhero stories. Not "sitcom" writers who want to ape their favorite prime-time soap opera or simply use the characters as props for their social activism. Give me an ICEMAN tale where he has to face off against SURTUR while trapped in his fiery realm, not a story where he's whining about his sexuality. APOLLO and MIDNIGHTER are two of my favorite superheroes of all time, a Badass couple that were taking on alien invaders, rogue gods and interdimensional monsters. There have been LGBT characters in comics for decades...but they were SUPERHEROES first and foremost. 4. Laziness: Kamala Khan. Miles Morales. America Chavez. Characters that have great potential, marred by laziness from the current generation of comic creators. It's laughable how these characters have no established rogues gallery or legendary storylines you can point to, say, like THE DARK PHOENIX SAGA or THE MASTER PLANNER .
remember when the superman office was adamant that he had to be the only kryptonian around because they said having kara etc watered down superman to the point that he wasn't unique anymore?
D.C. (company name) Gwen-Pool (character) - I don't think they are part of the titles... WELL SUPER MAN THE FLYING MAN RETURNS TO EARTH IS DEFINITELY A TITLE
These are 5 things off the top of my head. I feel that most of these can be distilled from the same issue though: Marvel is not prioritizing quality over marketing. 1) Writers/creators: Marvel and DC have all these new writers based more on ideology over talent. They have writers who know the characters well, such as Peter David, Chris Claremont, JM DeMatteis etc, but don't use them on ongoings. They also refuse to pay for the more talented modern writers and artists. So we have the best modern writers not working for the biggest franchises. There doesn't seem to be much oversight of this either by the higher ups. Writers and editorial are making terrible decisions without any consequences. 2) Constant reboots: First issues may give a sales boost, but it's bad long term since readers use it as a jumping off point. It also makes things more confusing for new readers who want to get back issues. A cheap gimmick that does more harm than good. 3) Mantle swaps and legacy characters: Another cheap gimmick that cheapens characters instead of growing them. The amount of Spider-People and Symbiotes are ridiculous. 4) Focus on ideology over the story: DEI is hamfisted into anything without any nuance, and often without making sense. I think it says something that gay characters introduced before 2010 have more depth and better characterization than any introduced recently. 5) Changing characters: Jason Aaron is probably the worst example of this (e.g. Punisher and Phoenix). The changes often take away from the depth of the character and add nothing worthwhile.ll
The amory wars, are named after the music album which intertwines with the story in the music. The amory wars the rest of it is named on the album of chapter of the story with the same name. It has more of a targeted audience.
Stuff that sucks is that runs get rebooted to a new number 1 so often. Creative teams keep changing mid run. Covers look different from interiors and there's an abundance of stories that have nothing meaningful to add to a character. Characters have no real voice , writers can't seem to get into the mindset of the origins of the character and just voice their opinions or views instead. There's also too many events and nothing feels cohesive or worth sticking around for. I love comics and I hope things change, but it doesn't look like the future is bright for the medium and it hurts :(
Yes, you can do a good origin retcon but not when you keep doing it and making it a convoluted mess. My pet peeve is dumping all over a major character to build up another character like they have been doing with Hal Jordan and John Stewart. I about threw up in the last Crisis animated movie when a group of GLs showed up cheering and saving that John is the greatest Green Lantern of all time. B.S., no that is Hal, just stop. Now the live action TV show is casting old Hal and just know they're going to kill him off and make the show all about John.
The reason there are so many Lanterns, Flashs, Spiders etc is because writers don't want to create original characters that Marvel/DC then own. They all think they're gonna become millionaires with their original characters on the indie scene when a studio picks up their book and makes a movie franchise out of it. Yeah, right.
One thing that I really hate is when they premiere an new replacement character and in their very first issue they solve some crisis that sees the OG character(s) already defeated by. It's been some years but they did it with 'The Mighty Thor' (she defeated frost giants that had laid out all of the Avengers, with new Mjölnir powers to boot) 'Miles Morales' (he beat Blackheart with his zappy powers as the Avengers lay defeated on the ground) They did it with Silk, Spider-Gwen, Batgirl and on and on. If the only way you can show that your legacy character is formidable is by having them easily beat a foe that has wiped the floor with the OG characters, you suck as a creator.
You pretty much hit all the points that grinds my gears.. except the fact that Miles Morales and Jak Fox need there own identities.. it shouldn't be 2 Batmen or Spidermen running around.
Tokenization and using LGBT, black ppl, Asians, women, etc as tools like shields and propaganda mouthpieces is something that BOTH Marvel and DC r doing, it is so annoying that they r doing. Easily 1 of the worst, if not THE worst. Horrible retcons is either a awful thing.
It's not driving me nuts. It drove me away.
Same here.
Same. The only reason I check in occasionally is to laugh at the sheer number of unintelligent people making fools of themselves online.
It's better than reading any comic since the early 90s.
Quitting comic books has saved me so much money.
Yeah I would mention what I used to dislike but I don't even care any more
Me too. I have redacted all my pull lists from my different shops and only buy in trades now if I know the story I’m getting is good.
My list:
1- Heroes vs Heroes
2- Events
3- Relaunchs
4-Everybody is gay
5- Nihilist deconstructions
4 and 5 are the same thing.
Also 6. Alternate cover clusterf*ck
Honestly, number 4 is a side effect of too many romance plots that add nothing to the story itself, just the writers usually self inserting themselves as the MC.
Yep, u nailed it, man! I'm so close to being completely done, just hanging on by the finger nails.
@@dhmc45 Totally with you we go with examples of course like Spider-Man. Peter is a man who to get physical has to have something emotional with the girl, but since he was separated from MJ he has become an out-of-character womanizer, just ew an uncertain self and another is Batman, the modern Batman does not ew to get married and all that nonsense but the writers follow that he has to fall in love but he contributes something nothing in the end goes that the refrigerator girl and an example of an uncertain self was Paul dini connle of Bruce and Zatanna we all know that tldo started with him and look at his fanfiction when he was little
I agree with you 💯 👍🏻 👌
Looking forward to your new channel - "Thinking Critical - the man who thinks critically while critically thinking' ..Great video as always!
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
1 too many variant covers. 2 too many events. 3 Too many copy cat characters. 4 too many crappy writers. 5 no stakes or continuity.
All villains are sympathetic now or even heroes. Everyone complaining that there are no good villains, but that’s because you got rid of them!
They turned Doctor Doom into an Iron Man, made Apocalypse an X-Men ally and are now trying to make Ultron an Avenger.
I want actual editors with spines hired. Ones that throw back asinine scripts, that tell artists to scrap a page and redo it because the design is garbage, that's willing to fire someone for wasting the company's time making propaganda instead of making something that sells.
I wish for continuity editors. How can characters have their own series and be in a team book at the same time without reprecussions affecting the person in neither book? Back in the day, Wolverine was called out for being in Madripoor and not helping the X-Men; then, he got ambushed because he was too tired (Uncanny 251). Now he fights on 3 different teams, without discussing it with any team...
100% agree. Production needs to change from top down.
The company is making the propaganda
@@blackcat7k They got rid of the competent ones specifically to not have to redo their bad Netflix pitches. Hollywood controls comics now.
@@blackcat7k They did have one - Jim Shooter. Comic book writers still shudder when they hear his name. This monster made them follow deadlines :p
My biggest issue is *mundanity*
Too many books that have guess what: characters sitting around, eating food and talking. Being on dates or on the phone (yes, Jon Kent books). We read these books for escapism and adventure, action, not mundane bullshit *you* do every day.
Jon Kent: Who has time for saving the universe, protecting Earth from enemies domestic, interplanetary or interdimensional when I can post on my Twitter account sitting at Starbucks?
Spider-Man: Paul forgets to fasten his seat belt and flys through the windshield. Comes out in December 100 pages and it's just nothing but him dying in multiple ways.
Shut up and take my money!!!
😂😂😂😂
Sign me up now!! I want the Red Band edition!! 🤣
Sounds like the Captain Marvel book I wanted to buy where she gets killed in more extreme ways on every page
Paul experiments on Jackpot super device and it teleports to a dimension where he constantly watches his “children” fade away over and over for all eternity. His father laughs at him. Mary Jane believes he was a false being like their “children”. She tells Peter, he forgives her, but says she needs to rebuild his trust in her.
Are we sure he can be killed, he seems like an anchor being for earth 616, that and Spider-Mans greatest villain
Everything has to be gay, there is entirely too many Spider Men and Green Lanterns, and the writers killing off well known characters for their new lame ass creations.
too many HUMAN GL'S.
Miles morales needs a new hero name. They made "spider-gwen" changed hers
@@khiclark31 Been saying the same thing for years. Name was already taken when he was created - if you are a professional writer, you gotta be able to come up with your own stuff. Standing on the shoulders of those who came before you doesn't make you great. Just makes you a copy-cat.
Preach. Been saying this for years. Need to get back to the basics and ret-con all these derivatives out of here. Just dilutes the main hero.
@@sebastianstark8517it made sense when he was first created, as he was literally filling Peter's shoes in the Ultimate universe.
But out of that in the 616 it's nonsensical
Wonder Woman: So I was raised in a middle class family…
I don't get it.
@@egonnn244 I don't either. I googled it and found nothing.
@@egonnn244 it was supposed to be in reference to the overly long comic book covers. Kamala Harris gave a 5 minute evasive answer to a simple question starting with “so I was raised in a middle class family”. The joke is that if her answer was the sub for a WW book, that’d be REALLY long
@@benjfischer Thanks for the explanation.
The events, the events. They mean nothing and it is frustrating to follow them for them to be undone in 6 months time.
No one dies and there is no stakes anymore.
"No one dies." Dearest, that's the past 30+ years of the business. This has _just_ come to your attention?
Not true @@FlameForgedSoul
I stopped reading comics every day like I used to around 2016 and when i picked up reading again i went crazy thinking about how much I've missed and how much i need to catch up on. Looks like i haven't missed too much. I'm just going to stick to the eras i enjoy.
There's 20 Supermen, 10 Batmen, a dozen Flashes, Captain Americas, Iron Men, and a hundred Lanterns. Green Arrow has a bunch of Arrows and an army of Canaries. Every book is this giant family ensemble and they all feel exactly the same: Completely meaningless, since even if a character dies, they have a lineup of identical clones to take over.
But there's only ONE Harley Quinn, and she's MINE!
Suggested title: Deathwish: First Date: Cuddling With the Crocodile.
Ya know, this is kinda fun!
💯
Yeah, that is why I still say DC should have never brought back the multiverse. Not if that's what they're going to do with it.
Want to know what wrong? All superhero stuff. Zero diversity.
@@jrpgnation6375 see that is where the multiverse could be used instead of making multiple versions of every character.
Do an Earth with no super heroes but maybe the Earth is invaded by aliens and normal people have to fight them. Not normal Bruce Wayne or normal Hal Jordan. Normal new characters.
Maybe a steam punk Earth or an Earth overrun with zombies.
If you're going to do a super hero Earth then. Do all new characters and not rehashes of imd characters.
Lack of Consistent continuity and numbering resets. Drives me insane and makes everything feel like it doesn’t matter.
My biggest pet peeve is when the main cover looks way better than the interiors. The artist on the pages should at least be drawing Cover A.
Wes, I love it when you lose it like this! You are channeling my thoughts and frustrations, but you do it in such an entertaining way.
Of the five things you listed, the one that makes me the most nuts is the proliferation of "super-families". It's shows a complete lack of thought and originality. Everyone from the top down at the big two is just phoning it in.
To put things in perspective, I remember fondly when I was boy how excited I would get when the new issue of Spider-Man hit the stands. There was that month's anticipation between issues that made it magical to snatch that Spidey book off the rack when it appeared! I would race home to read it. And then start counting the days to the next issue.
1) events and reboots
2) writers headhunted from fanfic
social media who don't like the
genre but want into the industry
3) killing or otherwise replacing
established characters with dei
reskins & self inserts
4) the shipping culture influence
and sudden gay conversions
5) multiversal madness. What was
once an amazing tool for alternate
takes on established characters
has just become another gimmik
Variant covers. When I originally started collecting comic books a variant cover meant something special. It meant that the book would be something epic, mind-blowing and potentially game-changing. These days every Tom Dick and Jane have variant covers, you get some books that have over a hundred of them and that's just ridiculous, I'm surprised it hasn't killed the industry already and it drives me nuts
It almost did back in the late 90's. They started focusing on "Collector's Comics" (#1's, death issues, first appearance issues & variant covers)
They flooded and crashed the market, Marvel went bankrupt and sold off the X-Men & F4 to Fox, Spider-Man to Sony & Hulk to Universal to survive.
And now they're doing it again. Nobody seems to understand you literally cannot industrialize fandom or collecting
The cost: It's getting too expensive to buy single issues anymore.
Now we know Wes' first idea for the name of his channel was Wes: Breaking Free!
Re: What’s driving me nuts in Comics today. The incessant need to constantly reboot and Ignore rich history, versus capitalizing and leveraging it.
Very similar issue with me: First issues.
Always resetting to #1 EVEN WITH THE SAME CREATIVE TEAMS. Nothing ever passes issue 12 anymore.
Sign of desperation for sales
Things driving me away from comics:
1. Stories where the characters sit around and tells another character the story, and the only action is flashbacks or someone changing positions.
2. Multiple pages with nine to twelve headshots of characters talking.
3. Boring ass stories.
4. Books being many months late.
I would read The Rocketeer: I Want To Break Free if it’s Freddie Mercury with a jet pack.
Isssue #2 The Rocketeer: I Want It All
Issue #3 The Rocketeer:Who wants to live forever
Issue #4 The Rocketeer:FLASH! AH AH!
;)
awsome 👌👌👌👌👌👌👌👌👌👌👌👌
The Rocketeer: 🎶Don't Stop Me Now🎶😂
GhostRider in a wheelchair. Nuff said
My wife is in HR and I told her that and she just started laughing.
@garfieldsbizzareadadventure5758 I honestly would have thought that would be a parody; a joke made by an artist and writer. That's an actual thing. It's so laughably bad. Motor cycle, and muscle car? Makes sense. Not this.
I'm sorry, but a gunless Punisher tops that
5 - Placing the issue number on the bottom of the cover
4 - Paper quality stinks
3 - Tom King
2 - One More Day is still canon
1B - Decompressed storytelling
1A - Marvel and DC cater to the vocal minority
we came so close to a retcon from brand new day.....
1A is actually not real. There is no one who buys these new comics, they're being pushed out because they're getting government money, in other words YOUR money to pump this political trash out/
1B is the big one. In the 80s and early 90s almost every X-Men comic could stand on its own, even if it was part of an ongoing storyline. Almost every issue was a good jumping on point.
@@KakasciiNo we didn’t. They just teased with it for the nth time as they have done since OMD. We were just dumb enough to believe that it was different this time, but it wasn’t.
@@davidgantenbein9362 we are not dumb we are just hopefull suckers... atleast we have a new what if in the new ultimate universe it ai t as bad as amazing lol
The stuff that drives me nuts is like the current Deadpool run, how they kill off Deadpool to replace him with his daughter.
The fact that they are more concerned with pushing agendas than telling good stories. Do they really hate making money that much??
Movie pitches disguised as comics are a plague.
When everyone is SUPER… no one will be.
Its not a big deal. Comics are for kids
You pretty much hit the nail on the head for me as far as my complaints. So I’ll just keep my list to three. 1) enough with the mantle swaps and variations of characters. 2) enough with 3+ company wide “events “ a year, 3)enough with sympathetic villains and dirtbag heroes. It’s been done to death. It’s not clever at this point.
Inversion of;
- canon
- morality
- ethics
- psychology
- sexuality
- religion & occultism.
- character origins
IE: Nightcrawler forsakes his religion to create his own, becomes a gleeful killer and now his parents are lesbians.
Agreed. 💯
No more subversion. Especially with religious characters, Nightcrawler is now an apostate, for a murderer who abandoned him as a child.
Yeh,now that you mention it,the way that Nightcrawlers story has played out,is wild 😂.
@@vernonhampton5863 how about the x-men acting like a cult trying to abduct and indoctrinate Franklin Richard into their Xenophobic island run by a high council made up of whom??
The drug induced suicide orgies for reincarnation did it for me
And Beast becoming a sociopathic spook for the mutant CIA?
Scott going Poly cuckhold to keep Jean as Wolverine is simping?
So much subversion for inversion
Marvel morality is completely bankruptcy in these days. Anyone can be a killer now.
To be fair, Mystique being his father was Claremont's idea
Purple and pink shouldn't be the primary colors in every effing comic
I mainly stick with the back issue bins! There is more good stuff to read than ill ever be able to in my lifetime!
1.) No more fundamental changes of characters, specifically race, gender, sexual orientation, age, or the character's purpose or core beliefs. This would be in the main universe, 616 for Marvel or Earth Prime universe in DC. They can do whatever they want in their Ultimate or Elseworlds universe, that's totally fine.
2.) Writing and art need to be at the very least, fairly decent,...and, at best, outstanding. No more mediocre to trash writing and stories. No more political or alternate lifestyle agenda forced stories. And, no more crappy, looking like it's traced or blatantly 3-D rendered, horrific art.
I guess another thing that in raged me to no end was what they did to my boy The Sentry like seriously FU Marvel
There's so many things, event bloat and constant tie ins, too many duplicate heroes, no stakes of death, replacement characters, but two of the things that annoy me that I don't think people will mention are:
1. Pacing: Horrible, so slow and you can go easily three issues without real story progression
2. 0 progression: I want characters to progress in their lives. Im even fine if characters get old and retire, i just want something to happen.
@@jacob2389Finally!!! someone's says it!!! Can we stop with all this
" Well their just world building "👷♀️ 👷♂️ 🌎 BS 🤬 let's advance this frickin story already!!! build on that bunch a idiot's 🤦🏾♂️. It would be like watching Keanu Reeves in John Wick film but all he does is eat a panini sandwich 🥪 in a deli for 40 minutes while having meaningless conversations about what might happen at a future date 🤣🤦🏾♂️🤣
There's a total imbalance with aging up characters and a huge inconsistancy in the way they're drawn and characterized - it's all over the place and defies logic. So many missed opportunitis to have beloved heros actually grow and mature with the legacy readers! How old is Cyclops meant to be now - in his late seventies at least!
Joker being gory and sadistic. People be treating him like he’s Zsaasz these days.
How that be?
@@WarBrer247 Running around mutilating himself and others with a knife. That’s not funny. It’s just dumb shock crap hack writing.
I feel like right now and for probably the last 12-15 years or so, can all be summed up by lack of talent and just sucking… & a complete disregard for Canon and who the characters have always been. I’m gonna say it really started with one more day and Joe Quesada not being able to process his own divorce without ruining the lives of the characters he was interested with.
Retconning characters. Stupid move. Why not just recreate a new universe since multiverse is very rampant right now?
"We only find them when they're dead".... "Something is happening to the children"
Exactly!!
You should try the manga titles, Wes some of them have very long titles like I leveled up my powers in the next life in order to get with the cool girl who is my demon boss! Now that’s a long title, and I just made it up but it’s similar to what’s out there.
My list:
1-) Marvel don't allow 616 Spider-man be with MJ again and grow as a character. Wells run was a huge letdown.
2-) The X-men were ruined completely in past years. These guys can be everything in nowadays but not are heroes anymore. And I don't see any way to fix the franchise at this point.
3-) Heroes and villains being very alike in nowadays. Heroes can be selfshes and took very questionable actions and the villains don't are true evil just misguided persons. All they are antiheroes in these days and this sucks so much.
4-)Heroes desconstruction. I'm so tired of this. Dc just can't learn with your past mistakes and move on. They insist in make dark and edge reinventions of your classic heroes.
5-) Movies changing the canon of the comics. More and more the Marvel 616 universe are becoming more similar to the MCU and this make zero sense.
And a special mention for Tom King. I cannot stand your shitty comics anymore.Your writing is the worst. Just kick this guy out of DC already.
Yea the amount of human Green Lanterns, too many Flash’s, Robins and every other hero, just make new heroes. Milking the same characters, same IP for decades, just create new things, there’s just nothing new.
We need a Survivor Series type of poll in order to narrow things down to the top 5 grievances. You can run it as an election event since we’re on our way there too.
Mine:
1. Too many self insert stories
2. Too many redundant characters
3. Too many events / crossovers / multiple titles that require only one.
4. Multiverse - Lack of Continuity
5. Forced diversity
Wes should interview Ed Brubarke
It's super rare that anything makes it past 12 issues. Also Unfinished runs
Batman stories are exactly the same. Again and again. Batman faces a villain, who has reinvented himself. He is beaten, pushes away the bat family, driven out of Gotham, he regains his confidence, returns to Gotham, brings together the bat family. Realising they’re not his weakness but his greatest strength, to then defeat the villain and promise a new age for the bat family. Until another villain resurfaces who has reinvented himself. Batman is beaten, pushes away the bat family, driven out of Gotham, he regains his confidence, returns to Gotham, brings together the bat family. Realising they’re not his weakness but his greatest strength, to then defeat the villain and promise a new age of the bat family. Then we start the cycle all over again,
As well the constant pandering to a minority of a minority of people that don’t buy comics, the ‘modern audience” doesn’t exist. Dc has sacrificed all its good will. From new 52, to rebirth, to 5g to new frontier. I’ve no confidence constant reboots and I won’t spend the money. Turning every character gay to tick a box even though there has been no hint of being gay for 30 years.
🤣🤣🤣 I'm dying. I'm not even a big D.C.or Batman fan and I figured this out recently 😂 I bought the Chip Zdarsky failsafe run just to see what Batman was about it was awful 🤦🏾♂️ Loved Jorge Jimenez on art but the story was just awful I still want my money back for those 4 issue's...
@@richardlloyd2354 So it's The LEGO Batman Movie on a loop?
Why the character’s sexuality is such a huge focus now. I just want a good story with some action.
Also I’m sick of writing for the trades. I’d like more stories in a 12 month period than just 2. 2 mediocre ones at that.
becauae writers thing they are saving the world
by eliminating injustices
No particular order:
Once a character is outed as LGBT that becomes their entire existence and is often handled with kid gloves because God forbid DC/Marvel piss off the activists who probably don't read the comics. Jon Kent suffers the worst from this. Any new original LGBT characters you have to expect this kind of treatment as well as coming off rather stereotypical.
"Writing for the trade" is not new and there are some benefits to that format, but you can tell sometimes with how much the writer just pads the issues with nothing really happening. Tom Taylor's mainstream books are very guilty of this with him coasting on feel good fan service and pretty art. At least have it feel every issue has something to offer to the story overall.
Plucking elements from adaptions and just shoving them into comic canon with no explanation. I have no problem with characters from the cartoons/movies/etc entering the comics or the comics taking ques from adaptations. There's a right and wrong way to do this however without ruining established canon. The Teen Titans suffer from this a lot usually with writers trying to force 03 cartoon elements without making much sense. And that Red X fumble no one talks about anymore. Or how everything Marvel did stared feeling like the MCU.
Lenticular covers. They give me a headache.
Whenever DC or Marvel feels they need to get a writer who matches the character in some way, i.e. black writer writes black characters or only women write female characters half the time they find the most incompetent examples. Gabby Rivera's America Chavez is a prime example and what made so many people not take this character seriously. Its also why some female led books become slice-of-life books instead of superhero books because that's what the female comic writer may be more use to.
If these comic book companies could make alternate universes worth a dang many of the side characters could be seperated in these universe they fit well in....
Miles Morales: Spider-Man Identity Theft and Doesn’t Really Do Anything Unique and Knuckles Featuring Dante from Devil May Cry
If I had control of DC I would end all current titles. I would then release 3 titles (all of them 48 pages) published monthly for one year before adding any new titles. The first 3 titles would be Detective Comics, Action Comics and Wonder Comics. Year 2 would introduce 6 more titles 3 heroes and 3 villains. Green Lantern, Flash, Cyborg, Darkseid, Lex Luthor and Bane. One can only dream.
Thanks! Best from Michigan!
Thanks Brian!
1) They trying to compete with isekai manga with the long titles 😂. 2) I am still pissed over Wonder Woman’s origin change. Nothing wrong with the clay 3) Ugh I hate the fab covers with the low tier interior art. 4) I think Spider-Man is the worse. That’s a character that should be one and one only. 5) it is getting out of hand with milestones.
I want to add revisiting popular storylines like Civil War and Secret Invasion.
1. Referring to comics series as 'Seasons.'
2. Comic characters shown wearing covid masks.
3. Characters in comics staring at their phones.
4. Mary Jane Watson.
5. Artist redesigning classic characters to resemble hack actors who will be gone in five years/half a dozen sequels.
I agree entirely with you Wes on all these. My biggest moan perhaps is the continual use now of creators I have never even heard of. Marvel and DC have so much talent they could turn to, but never offer them any work. Nearly all of the top artists associated with them both now are only hired for covers. What happened to Russell Dauterman doing interiors for example? The only conclusion you can come to, is that its purely cost cutting as they don't want to pay that talent what they should be earning any more.
1)Comic Book Names - Oh come on Wes. You mean to say you wont read "Batman:The Long Halloween:The Last Halloween:The Next Halloween:Before The Long Halloween"?!? >:) I personally am looking forward to "Wolverine:The Xman Who Lived: On a Farm:In Springtime:With Jean Grey:Who was killed by Sabertooth:In the field:With his Claws:To piss Wolverine Off" That will be the BEST BOOK EVER
2)Retconning Origins:Ah yes. Retconning. The most pointless task ever in the history of comics. "Did you know that the people killed in crime alley were NOT Thomas and Martha Wayne?! No! They were body doubles because Thomas and Martha were secretly spies working on a special ops assignment that went wrong and caused them to be held captive for decades. They were also secretly working on a chemical compound to use on other spies to drive them insane so they would reveal other government secrets and it was being housed at Acme Chemicals.... YES! Find out that Bruce and Joker are actually BROTHERS as Martha became pregnant during one of their missions with another mans child!!
🙄Only to have that all retconned six months later under the guise of Bruce being manipulated by Ras Al Ghul or Riddler, or Penguin or someone.... Because someone goes "Nahhh. Thats STUPID! I have a BETTER RETCON..."
3)Bait and Switch Art - Well, you said it yourself Wes. The artists are the draw, so they have them do one or two issues to get people hooked and then swap them out with cheaper flavor of the week artists. Easy way to stop that. Dump the book. You got your couple of issues with the good artists, now dump it. Unless the storyline is so compelling you can't......doubt thats the case right now.
4)Super-family overkill - I am waiting with baited breath for the Ambush Bug Family. Maybe the Willie Lumpkin Family? The Sentry Family? How about the Jay KnockyourMama Family? The Bernard Family? How about the Jason Todd Family that way the Bat Family can extend out even further. Heres hoping that Tom King takes all the Families and makes a Godfather kind of mini series where they try and kill each other off. Can you picture Dick Grayson walking into a room and screaming "SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND!!" and he throws a Batterang at one of the Flash Family!! or Batman talking to one of the Shazam Family "I am giving you an offer you can't refuse...." >:) Bruce Corleone!!
5)Stupid Anniversary Issues. Well. How elese will Marvel and DC get work for these talent-less hacks? Don't you know the story of Posion Ivys Neighbors best friends mailman HAS to be told?!?! You have to buy it because if you dont read that LAST page you wont have a clue whats going on going forward!!
Whats pissing me off
1)Stories with no direction: You have all these books going on that have absolutely meaningless plots. Seriously. Absolute Power is a convoluted MESS. Spiderman just meanders(Can we PLEASE get to the "Death of Paul" already...everybody is screaming for it), X-men is directionless, FLASH is directionless. I can not think of ONE book from the big two that have any sort of actual storyline that anyone cares about.
2)Pointless characters - See above. PAUL. What in the blue blazes! I think the last time I saw a character that absolutely pissed off the fanbase THIS much was PROBABLY..you know..I cannot think of one. Every Spider whatever. Spider Boy?!? REALLY?!? WHY. Every VENOM. Again...WHY?!? ElectraDevil, Jay KnockYourMama, Bernard, EVERY "New" X Man. All these, as you put it "Self Insert" Characters that keep showing up and throwing the main characters in the back of the bus! Its enough. If you want to write Self Related Fan Fiction, go do it, but Marvel and DC have to stop thinking we want to PAY for it.
3)Event Books - Enough will you. The events are all lame and lead to nothing but the NEXT Event. At this point does anyone really CARE. Does anyone think ANY event will have any lasting impact?!? I am sure once Marvel and DC see fatigue setting in they will "Reboot" the universe again.
4)Flavor of the day politics in the books. Quick, pull out the podium! I'm using Spider Man as my platform!! You know what it all reminds me off? How the books in the 40s all came out with anti Nazi books. Cap Punches Hitler. How often do you see those books reprinted in 2024? All these idiots are doing is making sure the books will sit in the long boxes next to that 100 copies of the Foil Embossed copy of Xmen from the 90s.
These characters are supposed to be timeless. The Stories are supposed to be LARGER THAN LIFE. If you think I want to pick up this weeks Batman and see him spend the book admonishing a local merchant for not using someones preferred pronouns....you're crazy. "Batman Shames Joker for not calling Harley They Them"..... Nope. Next.
5)Books that take 10 years to finish - Seen the latest issue of "The Last Days of Lex Luthor" yet? How about the latest issue of "Batman 89 - Echos" Seriously, what the heck?! How about just DONT solicit a book until its READY?!?! The desperation level is just UNREAL. I have seen this a lot over the years and you'd think by now SOMEONE would fix it. Half the times I dont know if the books been CANCELED, Lost, I missed an issue or WHAT?!? The funny thing is, if this happened on Detective or Batman or Spiderman...the world would probably go into MELTDOWN. It makes me leery of even picking up Mini Series anymore because this just HAPPENS and nobody says a word.
and of course theres the whole lets gender swap/orientation swap some character out of the clear blue. But at this point, you just have to dump the title when they do it.
The message and gay hijacking of straight characters......oc characters by fan fiction writing....and writers not knowing cannon....
I'm sick of multi billion dollars companies like marvel and DC blaming me the fan for not liking something they released
Kenneth Rockfort was on sideways for new age of heroes and actually did 9 of the 13 issues and did the entire last arc. I think he was the most consistent of all the new age of heroes.
Re: Titles: The Phenomenon: Book 3!
It's a trope amusingly called "Colon Cancer".
There used to be a website that catalogued this stuff, thousands of 'em.
Loved this show, btw.
Superman needs to be John Byrned again.
No way.John Byrne ruined the character. Superman need be more like your Pre-Crisis version again. The greatest superhero that ever lived.
@@EvandroACruzwhat’s the name of the comic? So I can read it of course I’d love to see what you’re referring to. Love Superman
Totally. My first Superman comics were his and still my gold standard.
@@EvandroACruzsorry but Pre Crisis infallible God Superman is what people who hate Superman talk about to run him down. Boring.
@@LibraGamesUnlimited There's nothing boring about Pre-Crisis Superman. Just read some stuff written by Martin Pasko,Cary Bates,Marv Wolfman,Elliot S. Maggin and Paul Kuppeberg. All them were very superior to John Byren. Byrne ruined Superman mythos and make him a Marvel character. Superman supposed to be better than this.
1. Constant reboots
2. Multiple characters having the same code name at the same time
3. No title on the first page(or at all)
4. Writing for the trades and taking multiple issues to tell a one issue story
5. Too many events
I can tell Wes isn’t into Coheed & Cambria. It’s Amory(not Armory) and those long ass titles are the titles of their albums and naming the comics those names tells you which album that arc corresponds to.
Paying the marketing department more than the actual creatives.
Dude, you have to put a trigger warning before showing Tom Taylor's face. I reflexively punched the screen.
Dude. I just turned 50. All of the energy that jumped off the page when I was buying image books in the 90s is gone.
Those stories weren’t great but they were so fun and captivating.
Spawn, Gen 13, Witchblade, The Maxx, Pitt, Crimson. What has replaced them? Manga and a gigantic lack of visual storytelling.
So the Green Lantern corps should have a bunch of members, but the rest is wow.
Wes: I FEEL LIKE IM TAKING CRAZY PILLS HERE!
i agree with pretty much all these criticisms but my major problem is the quality of the floppies and collected editions. Glued binding and shit quality paper. To me the golden standard for collected editions (both paperback, hardcover, and deluxe hardcover) are Image, Boom, and Dark Horse.
Not giving enough (or often any) work to great creators who are still ready and willing to do great work, e.g., Jerry Ordway, Ron Frenz, Tom Grummett, Rick Leonardi, Jon Bogdanove etc. With regards to writers, Chris Claremont, JM DeMatteis, Roger Stern and David Michelinie should all be in regular books. I could think of more…
I have to admit the weird names will draw me in at the store, although I haven't been comic shopping in quite a while. I have bought plenty of manga though.
What compounds the stupidity, these shitty gimmicks are in the hands of hacks.
Price. Hands down. I'm Canadian, so our dollar is shit. I have to pay 30% more on top of the U.S. price. Too many spider people.
Over here in Brazil the American Dollar is about 5.50 of our own currency. Add to the problem the terrible payments practiced here and the each day higher cost of living. I strive to keep Comics very close to me due to the great passion I have for the media, but that hás affected severely our readership over here.
I must although state that that is a problem regardless of the comic media. The problems displayed in the vídeo are enormous factors on why many don't even bother to try to keep up with current comics. What is most sold over here are reprints.
Besides comics having "The Message", uglification, and race swaps, here's the 5, off the top of my head, that annoy me:
1. Comic covers parodying or making "homages" to classic comic covers especially the ones based on the Crisis issue of Superman holding dead Supergirl.
2. Resurrecting dead characters and killing off heroes for shock value.
3. Company-wide multiversal events.
4. All of DC revolving around Batman
5. Superhero no-kill rules because killing the villain is being just as bad as them.
the fifth only as a last resort
never the first response
@@ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΑ-ε1ω Understandable. Colossus did it best.
1: To many versions of everyone. 2: No character consistency. 3:All political nonsense especially far left agenda's. 4:Relationships being dismantled for no reason. 5:Comically bad artwork.
#1 problem in comics are progressive "ideals".
Wes that was @#$&ing hilarious 11:22! I cannot stop laughing.😂
Wes, Amory Wars is based off the albums produced by Claudio Sanchez's band Coheed and Cambria. It's been a thing since the early 2000s. The albums and comics are connected, I believe it's the name of one of Coheed's first records.
Awesome work guys
It's been awhile since you made a video this hilarious but you're absolutely right Wes.
It's becoming clear that the industry now primarily lets women write female characters. This would be fine if they were putting talented writers on these books, but we often see people like Leah Williams or a generic 'Stephanie' instead.
I’m sick of the cover(s) being so much better than the interiors (see: that new Spirits of Vengeance book). Give me a quality story and art on something at the big two!! Remember when covers were indicative of what was inside? All these homage covers are of when covers reflected the interiors of the book!
60 issue crossovers. Blood hunt sucked. Absolute Power sucks. Not because of bad concepts so much as the fact that they aren’t even linear stories anymore. Blood hunt wouldn’t have been so bad if you could get the mini series and then pick and choose which other stories to read, but if you just read blood hunt, it didn’t make sense, same with absolute power!!!
Variant interiors. Did Dr. Strange get gutted by Blade or not? That was the back breaker for me there. If you are going to do mature books, you already have a mature imprint, MAX, and those aren’t flipping polybagged!!
No more editors taking something that could have been cool and blowing it up into an event because the schedule needs one that month!!
I could go on and on and on…
Thanks for another excellent discussion, Mr. Wes. A few things that grind my gears from modern comics:
1. Trying to be ALAN MOORE/Deconstruction because you think you are deep:
I loathe writers who - instead of embracing the fantastic nature of the genre and delivering a fulfilling superhero yarn - want to copy ALAN MOORE with something they think is deep, like TOM KING's usage of JENNY SPARKS, a character that has a colorful century-long history in her original universe...and King makes her a cursing, brooding caricature of herself just for some social commentary about the early 2000s.
2. Creating New characters while ignoring established ones: X-MEN FROM THE ASHES. The upcoming NEW CHAMPIONS. X-MEN: CHILDREN OF THE ATOM. We see writers brought in and, instead of using the great host of characters already established in the fictional universes, they have to create NEW characters - that will be thrown to the wasteside again for yet more pointless new characters. I'd rather see creative teams focus on characters that haven't been used for a while instead of creating a character that will be used for one storyarc and vanish into limbo never to be used again.
3. Wrong genre writers: I know the best writers are supposed to be versatile, but what DC and MARVEL both need are SUPERHERO COMIC WRITERS, folks who want to craft superhero characters into superhero stories. Not "sitcom" writers who want to ape their favorite prime-time soap opera or simply use the characters as props for their social activism. Give me an ICEMAN tale where he has to face off against SURTUR while trapped in his fiery realm, not a story where he's whining about his sexuality. APOLLO and MIDNIGHTER are two of my favorite superheroes of all time, a Badass couple that were taking on alien invaders, rogue gods and interdimensional monsters. There have been LGBT characters in comics for decades...but they were SUPERHEROES first and foremost.
4. Laziness: Kamala Khan. Miles Morales. America Chavez. Characters that have great potential, marred by laziness from the current generation of comic creators. It's laughable how these characters have no established rogues gallery or legendary storylines you can point to, say, like THE DARK PHOENIX SAGA or THE MASTER PLANNER .
The Pearl Gorilla got me 🤣🤣🤣
remember when the superman office was adamant that he had to be the only kryptonian around because they said having kara etc watered down superman to the point that he wasn't unique anymore?
Yes, and they wonderfully ignored. Cope
that title convention... to add Long Halloween, Death In Family etc... it's attempt to squeeze a few more sales...
Retcon of Green Lantern origin ,anybody???!!!
You mean, again?
D.C. (company name) Gwen-Pool (character) - I don't think they are part of the titles... WELL SUPER MAN THE FLYING MAN RETURNS TO EARTH IS DEFINITELY A TITLE
These are 5 things off the top of my head. I feel that most of these can be distilled from the same issue though: Marvel is not prioritizing quality over marketing.
1) Writers/creators: Marvel and DC have all these new writers based more on ideology over talent. They have writers who know the characters well, such as Peter David, Chris Claremont, JM DeMatteis etc, but don't use them on ongoings. They also refuse to pay for the more talented modern writers and artists. So we have the best modern writers not working for the biggest franchises. There doesn't seem to be much oversight of this either by the higher ups. Writers and editorial are making terrible decisions without any consequences.
2) Constant reboots: First issues may give a sales boost, but it's bad long term since readers use it as a jumping off point. It also makes things more confusing for new readers who want to get back issues. A cheap gimmick that does more harm than good.
3) Mantle swaps and legacy characters: Another cheap gimmick that cheapens characters instead of growing them. The amount of Spider-People and Symbiotes are ridiculous.
4) Focus on ideology over the story: DEI is hamfisted into anything without any nuance, and often without making sense. I think it says something that gay characters introduced before 2010 have more depth and better characterization than any introduced recently.
5) Changing characters: Jason Aaron is probably the worst example of this (e.g. Punisher and Phoenix). The changes often take away from the depth of the character and add nothing worthwhile.ll
The amory wars, are named after the music album which intertwines with the story in the music. The amory wars the rest of it is named on the album of chapter of the story with the same name. It has more of a targeted audience.
Stuff that sucks is that runs get rebooted to a new number 1 so often. Creative teams keep changing mid run. Covers look different from interiors and there's an abundance of stories that have nothing meaningful to add to a character. Characters have no real voice , writers can't seem to get into the mindset of the origins of the character and just voice their opinions or views instead. There's also too many events and nothing feels cohesive or worth sticking around for. I love comics and I hope things change, but it doesn't look like the future is bright for the medium and it hurts :(
Yes, you can do a good origin retcon but not when you keep doing it and making it a convoluted mess.
My pet peeve is dumping all over a major character to build up another character like they have been doing with Hal Jordan and John Stewart.
I about threw up in the last Crisis animated movie when a group of GLs showed up cheering and saving that John is the greatest Green Lantern of all time.
B.S., no that is Hal, just stop. Now the live action TV show is casting old Hal and just know they're going to kill him off and make the show all about John.
The reason there are so many Lanterns, Flashs, Spiders etc is because writers don't want to create original characters that Marvel/DC then own. They all think they're gonna become millionaires with their original characters on the indie scene when a studio picks up their book and makes a movie franchise out of it. Yeah, right.
Yes! This change with the art in an ongoing story is annoying. I hate that too.
lol pearl gorilla
I might actually read your Pearl Gorilla story.
My eyes started hurting when you blurted out comic tittles 😂
One thing that I really hate is when they premiere an new replacement character and in their very first issue they solve some crisis that sees the OG character(s) already defeated by. It's been some years but they did it with 'The Mighty Thor' (she defeated frost giants that had laid out all of the Avengers, with new Mjölnir powers to boot) 'Miles Morales' (he beat Blackheart with his zappy powers as the Avengers lay defeated on the ground) They did it with Silk, Spider-Gwen, Batgirl and on and on. If the only way you can show that your legacy character is formidable is by having them easily beat a foe that has wiped the floor with the OG characters, you suck as a creator.
You pretty much hit all the points that grinds my gears.. except the fact that Miles Morales and Jak Fox need there own identities.. it shouldn't be 2 Batmen or Spidermen running around.
Tokenization and using LGBT, black ppl, Asians, women, etc as tools like shields and propaganda mouthpieces is something that BOTH Marvel and DC r doing, it is so annoying that they r doing. Easily 1 of the worst, if not THE worst.
Horrible retcons is either a awful thing.