Marvel You Are Boring Me

So my last post was of a positive note and I had even forgotten a book like Overtaken #1 from Aspen comics, a promising science fiction book and the first issue was only $1. It came out last Wednesday.

Of course in order to continue to explore new series I need to chop away some dead wood and Marvel has grown a little too bloated in the buy category. I always need to be aware of the creep factor with Marvel. Marvel comics are usually the fastest reads of any book so I often forget to critically evaluate kicking some books to the curb.

This week the first kick to the curb is Captain America. I love Rick (Fear Agent) Remender as a creator but he often gets lost in trying to bring his story to a conclusion. This “epic” was 10 issues long and the retail price (I get a decent discount from my store that saves my ass) is $40 and often plus tax in many states. For this we got a story that (SPOILER ALERT)

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kills off Cap’s girl friend Sharon Carter for no apparent reason. In Remender’s back matter, I think the time shift is the bigger deal with Captain America. Rick apparently felt that the time lost warrior theme was missing with Captain America. The fact that ten years or more passed for him in Dimenson “Z” while no significant time passed for the “real Marvel universe” brings back that time lost factor. This is too subtle of a change and will be ignored by every other writer and does not have the same impact of being out the real world for decades to only come back into a brave new world. Plus with Marvel’s sliding scale of time Captain America apparently was unfrozen in 2004, which means he missed almost 60 years. That idea or element is never brought up much at Marvel because it creates way too many problems with character that are all 50 years old. We are pretending they are not. Just think if the USA every gets out of being at war in ten years Iron Man will have to be injured in a mining accident or something and create his armor there or something as stupid. This of course is the problem with comics that want to be continuity based but are being continuously published forever.

The bottom line is that the story was not that great and while I’m happy Romita is off the book I have no interest in paying $4 for another epic. Captain America is boring. Heck I see him in Avengers all the time anyway. Finally Remender never invested us in the relationship with Sharon and relied on past history to make her death seem like anything. Then he added a cornball Nomad thing in Dimension Z.  Add to that Romita’s work turns into crap after a few issues and by the end of this he apparently is barely sketching an outline and it was an easy drop.

Next up on the drop parade is Thor. After an 11 issue epic story that was enjoyable and had terrific art we get a $4 fill in issue that focuses on an old character now having brain cancer. Ugh. Heck even the epic had a one shot of Gorr’s origin as a middle fill in book. Thor is by Jason Aaron, who I like and the art by Esad Ribic was great, but it was not worth $40 retail price. Heck most states are at 6% so it is $42.40 in reality. Would I pay $40 for this story as a graphic novel ($44 with the bad guy origin). The answer is no. Plus the design of floppy ear Gorr was something I never liked. So I save $4 a month and can spend it on Jason Aaron’s new Image series coming out called Southern Bastards. This is a win/win in my book.

Next up on the elimination parade is FF. With issue #11 Matt Fraction continues doing a little bit of homage to the original FF run on many issues. If you go back to the Lee/Kirby stuff issue #11 had the Impossible Man as does this issue. The problem is again the forever story. This group who is filling in for the FF has been fun in some aspects and with Allred’s art guaranteed to be quirky but nothing is moving forward. The old Torch story line has languished, the Doom story is going nowhere, characterization is being spread among a ridiculous large cast. You only have 20 some pages a month and therefore with a large cast you either ignore some people or move every character a tiny step each issue. I would rather read Fraction’s mini-series from Image. Another book I have to leave is Fantastic Four, but let’s face it 11 issues in and we are getting nowhere. Plus Fraction feels Inhumans series is more important and is leaving the script writing to others to finish out his story. Why should I invest if Fraction is not investing?

So that is four books off my list.

This week Marvel bored me even more with their mini-event, Battle of the Atom. At least is almost self contained as it includes the two Bendis books, the two part book end pieces and 2 issues of Wolverine and the X-Men as the entirety of the event. But the prelude is in Uncanny X-Men and who is attacking them Sentinels. Oh boy that is something different. We haven’t seen Sentinels as the big bads in X-books only all the fucking time. Oh wait a mysterious person is behind it – yawn. These books may have to go soon.

We also got another chapter in Infinity along with the last issue of Thanos Rising. My god this is really boring, I can eliminate three series in one fell swoop. I will probably follow the whole thing because I thing complete arcs sell better on Ebay.

And that is why MARVEL IS BORING THE CRAP OUT OF ME.

Make Mine IDW, no Image, no Valiant, no Dark Horse, no Dynamite, no Boom, if only we had some alternatives to check out.