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thomas englehart shooter Part of the day was spent reading Shooter Perez era Avengers from twenty seven years ago. I'd gotten a short run of about seven books from an online auction and was eager to read them, because they were published about two years before I got into collecting the title. Once I started to read them I immediately noticed something. The feel to the books is completely different from what is being written today. At first I was going to say that they seem more innocent, but that wouldn't be right. Some of the dialogue might be stilted, but there was already the topic of Hank's mental problems filling up pages even then. Today the writers have taken that idea to its extreme, but the seed was planted many years ago. If it wasn't for Shooter, Bendis would never have been able to create The Ultimates. No, there were serious themes in the book even then. What I think makes the book different is that there is less baggage weighing it down. At that time the book had only been around for fourteen years. Being able to go back to the beginning was still reasonably possible. Of course this line of thinking is exactly what Marvel says is keeping them from gaining new readers today. In their opinion there is too much back story to absorb. I disagree. When I first read issue two hundred eleven those many years ago, it was the mystery behind these people that made me want to read more. I wanted to know what happened to them before I came into the picture. I wanted to see them revive a lost Captain America. I wanted to see the original team members all quit and leave Cap with four raw recruits. I wanted to see them encounter the members of Zodiac for the first time. To me all of that previous history was glorious and had to be experienced. Today however the trend seems to be to revise and or condense as much of that story as possible. I find that to be sad. Can't people dive into the middle of the story and not be completely lost? Does everything have to be simplified? Does a comic book have to resemble the plot of an average Hollywood movie? I still love making my way through the eras of the book. Stan started with something simple and it grew into something far greater. There was the introduction of The Vision during the Roy Thomas era. Steve Englehart gave the Marvel universe Mantis, a Vietnamese woman who knew martial arts and spoke in the third person. Okay, it probably sounds dumb today, because its been used over and over in other forms of entertainment, but at the time it was fresh if not challenging stuff. Later there was Shooter as I've already mentioned and not too long after was quite a respectable run by Roger Stern. Yes, the book did flounder through the 1990's, but Marvel as a company was churning out more and more inferior work. It was all about numbers to them and the stories suffered. Sadly the same thing is happening now. They have handed the book over to Brian Michael Bendis to deconstruct and start over with something new. Marvel did that with the boys from Image a decade ago and it failed. I am so hoping that the same thing does not happen this time. There is the possibility that Bendis will surprise me and make the book better than ever, but I have my doubts. Yes, Busiek ran his course and so did Geoff Johns, but is that reason enough to kill the book entirely? Do we really have to see them defeated before we can love them again? Is modern art nothing more than suffering? |