>X-Men (Vol. 2) #1 is the bestselling comic of all time, selling over eight million copiesDid it deserve the success?
>>150700159sure why not
>>150700159>a dollar fiftyGod. I want to go back to the 90's.
Was it a success or was it people speculating it would be valuable later?
>>150700159>Did it deserve the success?No, it's a very weak comic. The whole thing was made-to-order after editorial drew up a list of things they wanted, like making Magneto a villain again (just because), leaving little room for creativity. Claremont's disinterest in the material is palpable on every page. It only sold as many copies as it did because it was a #1 relaunch of Marvel's flagship book, and because Marvel had fooled people into believing that buying up #1s was an investment that could be collected on later when all the #1s the company was churning out became collector's items. But the comic-book speculation bubble no sooner formed than it burst, resulting in the comic-book crash of the 1990s and Marvel going bankrupt.
>>150700268just go offline >>150700159>the bestselling comic of all time, selling over eight million copies#2 sold about 6% of that, or under 500k copies; #1 was sold over 5 weeks (with multiple covers each week) to draw out the hype at the height of the bullshit bubbleto put that into perspective, in the 1940s Fawcett were shifting 1.4 million Captain Marvel Adventures every month, and around 1960 the Beano was selling 1.2 million copies every week, in both cases, reliably and over a very long time, while in 1991 Look-in, a fucking tv guide for Britbong kids, was selling 128k/week (or as much per month as X-Men after that #1 issue) at the same price point in a market 20% of the sizehttps://downthetubes.net/british-comics-reference/the-british-comic-industry-questions-and-answers/british-comics-sales-figures-the-good-old-days/8 gorillion sales per month would have been impressive, bubble or not, if they'd sustained it for even 6 months, as it stands it's just a symbol of everything that was wrong with the market from the publishers right down to the consumers at that time
>>150700447>like making Magneto a villain again (just because)This was majorly because Jim Lee pushed for it and Claremont had waning influence. Lee wanted to do X-Men like the X-Men comics he read as a kid, Shi'ar, Magneto, that sort of things. Him and the other superstar artists were selling so many books that Marvel was hanging on their every word. It is part of the reason why Claremont left the book shortly after, because he felt like he was no longer listened to.
>>150700268I always like this Harlan Ellison rant about Death of Superman and he rants about 90s prices kek.https://youtu.be/SgAXCT99m0M
>>150700159i bought all the covers. they for a big picture
>>150700416Success=moneyNothing else, anon.
>>150700447Here's the thing, anon, comic speculation never ended. People are still speculating even now, comic grading services are rampant and speculators still snatch up #1s frequently, leading to more series being reset back to #1 to get a sales spike.
>>150700447>resulting in the comic-book crash of the 1990s and Marvel going bankrupt.It isn't properly correct to say the crash made Marvel bankrupt. If you look at sales figures, even as the bubble burst, Marvel was routinely selling a bunch of books.Marvel's problem was actually about financial overexposure. The company had been leveraged against not just buying its own distributors (Heroes World), but went hard in the trading card market (Fleer). The financial speculators who owned Marvel basically saddled it with debt and bought trading card companies at a time when the bottom was about to burst for the trading card market too. If Marvel hadn't of been done in like this then the crash may not have damaged it as much.
>>150700750Indeed, speculation now is still crazy. Variants are a form of speculation because there are order bonuses (1 in 20 etc). But floppies lose value REALLY QUICKLY. Gimmicks like variants are for whale consumers and speculators inflate the price. I've been in a few situations over the last few years where I saw some books skyrocket in price and sold them. TMNT The Last Ronin was something I saw first hand really badly. Just the other day I saw someone trying to sell a set of it to a comic shop owner for a massive price and the owner had to really let him down gently that his pricing was insane. Ultimate Spider-Man new series went crazy in the secondary market. As did the first appearance of Punchline a few years ago, the new Joker girlfriend villain.
>>150700639Whats the first instance of a creator getting onto a comic property and trying to revert it to the status quo of when they were a kid?Obviously, this is standard practice now in the industry now. I'm just wonder if we know case zero?
>>150700159No. Obviously not. All of the image guys are just incredibly lucky to be at the right place at the right time. Anyone would've benefited from the same market forces that made them big. Anyone drawing an X-men No. 1 in 1991 would've been huge. Jim Lee wasn't the worse but he wasn't the best, he was lucky. Luckiest dude in the history of the industry.
>>150700882>Whats the first instance of a creator getting onto a comic property and trying to revert it to the status quo of when they were a kid?No idea.The Image guys in particular were massively criticised as basically being illiterates who were only really into comics and therefore comics fans creating comics, rather than the older school guys who at least had more influences. Maybe it is just diminishing returns.Not the first time that fuckery has happened with the X-Men. Jim Shooter wanted to bring Jean Grey back for X Factor despite Claremont's alternate ideas (using her sister) and protests. Kurt Busiek, who famously wrote a letter into X-Men criticising Dark Phoenix (pic related), literally gave them the idea of how Jean would be resurrected.
>>150700981I think it was John Bryne who called Kurt an absolute weasel for this, but it was Bryne himself who wrote the story in FF.
>>150700981>Kurt Busiek quit reading X-Men because "Dark Phoenex Saga" was too extreme for himWell, that explains a lot about Kurt Busiek's writing.
>>150701038He should have quit X-Men because it was dogshit.
>>150701133OK.
>>150700981Roy Thomas is I'm pretty sure the first fanboy who became a writer, that's why all his big ideas were either about Timely characters from when he was a kid like the Vision or books he read when he was a kid like Conan
>>150701284>that's why all his big ideas were either about Timely characters from when he was a kid like the VisionU wot?
>>150700848Why no bubble bursting now?
>>150701433The Vision is based off an alien character from 40s
>>150701500The type of speculation I described with floppies now DOES burst over a short term period. Like Punchline's first appearances was massively sort after but over a few months it crashed. Whale consumers in particular drive this quick bubble and crash.Covid boosted a bunch of entertainment despite the huge industry issues like the distribution implosion and this has not stopped. Comics sales by dollar amounts have been steadily increasing but not units (comics cost more now, which means sales amounts increased but they aren't selling more units). The problem is simply stagnation, they are not going down rapidly, there is some increase but it doesn't seem like a lot of new customers. Some shops have had problems but plenty have been fine, boosted by lines like Absolute or Ultimate.Anecdotally I think collected editions have a more serious bubble forming. Collected editions, particularly omnibus editions, are massively pushed by FOMO consumers and YouTubers. But the prices have increased, they are large books, people have limited space and they are printing too many titles too quickly. In some Facebook groups I have seen people liquidate collections or stop buying stuff because they have what they need/want already.
>>150701652We need omnibus editions to remain in print so it's easy for people to read old runs
>>150701694The masterwork line was recently cancelled. Epics have had major issues with reprints and not filling gaps.The problem with omnis is they are printing too many series too fast. The FOMO makes people buy a bunch but equally creates burn out. A lot of collector/shelfies type people don't buy books for the love of them. YouTubers are driving this further.Marvel should slow down a bit with some series but they aren't/
>>150701502What a hack.
>>150701502>>150701284I mean is this Roy using ideas he liked from Timely as a fanboy or reusing ideas from Timely because that is something Marvel did in general?
>>150701878You can maybe ask that to Stan when he brought in Cap and Namor, but he was the first guy to come up with the shield tossRoy was obsessed with those old charactersIt would be like someone today trying to reboot Bloodwynd
>>150702002>Roy was obsessed with those old charactersGot a source? I am interested in finding out more desu.
>>150702018You've got the aforementioned Vision who also had the bonus of having the body of the original Human TorchYou've got the Invaders, which was him redoing the old All Winners Squad so he could bring back characters like the fucking Whizzer, who he made the father of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch in the first of their many parental retconsHe did the same thing over at DC with the All Star Squadron which was just JSA, then also did the children thing again with Infinity IncThat's just off the top of my head
>>150702176I was more interested if Roy ever openly admitted it was nostalgia or something and not just comics reusing ideas.
>>150701878It’s a Roy thing. His original pitch for a new Avengers character was actually bringing back the original Golden Age Vision. Stan Lee said no and told Thomas that the newest Avenger should be an android (he never said why). So Thomas made him an android named Vision with some similar design elements.
>>150700159>claremont and jim lee Not rikery.
>>150700217fpwp
>>150700268The best comics still cost a dollar or less. Just check your LCS's bargain bin. I guarantee what's in there is better than whatever junk is on the recent racks.
>>150700882>>150700981>>150701284Damn capeshit really is a factor for arrested development
>>150700848>>150701652>whale consumersWhat consumers?
>>150701502>>150702379From what I heard it's because he didn't want to make an OC since Marvel would own them anyway, so might as well use a guy Marvel would already own.
>>150700159For perspective, Demon Slayer has sold over 220 million copies.
>>150704841>he didn't want to make an OCOn that note, what OCs *has* Roy Thomas created? I know he's claimed credit for a lot of stuff recently, but what has he actually invented?
>>150700268we need cheap comics on the racks in stores again. newstands, walgreens, outlet stores, the supermarket, cvs I dont care, just bring the kids back into the fold and make comics fun and affordable again.
>>150704957People like Brevoort keep claiming nobody will buy comics if they switch from glossy paper to cheap paper to make them affordable, but it's obvious that whenever he talks about fans he's really talking about collectors. There's no reason not to switch to cheap paper if they really want to reach a wider audience. Glossy paper can be saved for the trades, omnis, etc.
>>150705000they buy up manga all the time, and its black and white and made of cheap paper. instead of bleach they'd be buying the avengers back when the movies were starting and became the biggest blockbuster we'd ever seen. keeping the comics in the comics stores exclusively was retarded as hell
>>150705014Can't be sure, but I think people pointed that out to him on his formspring and he maybe gave some vague response about it being a different market. Could be confusing him with a different suit though.
>>150704465Whale consumers, high-spending customers who generate a disproportionate amount of revenue for a business. I've seen people like that go into LCS and drop 200 on shitty variant comics for stuff they don't even read just to get pretty covers.
>>150704858Roy Thomas now has a credit for Wolverine. But he waited until Len Wein and John Romita Sr were dead. It caused a controversy a few years ago. To complicate matters I once saw a competition piece run by Roy to create a new character that he may have ripped to create the basis of Wolverine.
>>150705856Thanks, I searched the term but wasn't getting any hits so I appreciate the answer.
>>150705014isn’t manga also limited to book stores? Wouldn’t that kind of absolve distribution of most blame for poor sales?
>>150704957>>150705000I can tell you back when I was buying comics in the 90s, if they had switched to shitty manga paper I would be buying a lot less.
>>150705883>>150705856they're a huge problem for comics because some of them obsessively buy everything a particular publisher puts out, or everything a particular character is inproblem with that is that it masks the number of actual consumers, so when a whale dies, they take a disproportionate amount of the market with them and these are generally older guys who are fond of barbecue and gallon jugs of pepsiit's hard to estimate how many really big whales there are, but it's probably a number in the low thousands who actually form the core customers of each publisher>>150706359it's not just the existing customers, new customers are judging your product against what's on the shelf next to itif you're putting out newsprint in a supermarket next to lifestyle glossies and tv guides that are on much better paper, you're gonna look like ass and nobody will touch you>>150706326no because there's a lot more bookstores than comic book stores>>150705000people also won't buy something that *is* cheap compared to what's on the shelf next to itthey'll literally pay double for a brand they recognize and like, and pass over a thing that looks smaller at the same price point even if it's higher qualitycurrently Cosmopolitan - which outsells the entire US comics market every issue - is $4.99 and loaded with ads and shit, and the market leader in terms of lifestyle glossiesso good luck competing with that for fucking $5 every month, particularly if the best writing you have is Bendis, Hickman, Johns or whoever or some 40 year old #1s in an anthology, and the highest quality art you're going with is the eye-bleed shit Land does or the unfinished bishie shit Yu does or whatever the fuck is going on with insert artist heredead medium is dead
>>150706359>sales to people who put comics in plastic bags go down>sales to people who read comics go upSounds like a win.
>>150700659It's really very sobering.
>>150706359>if they had switched to shitty manga paper I would be buying a lot less.They did though. For a couple of years they were printing everything on glossy paper but then they went back to printing on cheaper paper and added more pages.
>>150700159It sold well because it released at the height of the 90s speculator bubble. Where everyone assumed that the new #1 issues comics were releasing would be worth as much as Action Comics #1. Which isn't how economics work. Sadly.
>>150700659Harlan Ellison was the sci-fi and fantasy fandoms cranky old atheist neckbeard uncle to stan lees cool grandfather.
>>150704957>>150705000>>150705856The comic industry is now a pseudo premium industry. That is the shift of the economy. Expect the top 10% bracket's spending to be the 50% of the sales amount. Just like Disney and their new model to the parks which is basically the freemium model of gatcha games.Now there are enough people with free spending capable to drive the sales just to get a variant cover and keep the bottom line of the publisher floating.
>>150707138I read the comics I bought, anon.>>150707163Not on the titles I read. I picked up Spawn for example after it switched from shit paper to glossy (I think it happened around issue 9). This was not because of the paper though of course. But Spawn never went back to shit paper.
>>150707236Harlan wasn't a neckbeard. He was based. Someone once sat outside his house with a rifle to kill him, and Harlan snuck up behind him with a gun and caught him. Harlan was pretty based and his kvetching was generally entertaining.
>>150707945>I picked up SpawnWell that's just your own damn fault
>>150700981To be fair to Kurt, the Hellfire Club really does fucking suck
>>150709323Nah it's fun.
>>150700981Kurt was right about Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams’ leftwing circlejerk ruining Hal Jordan.
>>150700159I legit think X-Men #1 selling so well is the reason why Jim Lee has the position of President despite being half the reason why the guy who actually made X-Men popular quit.
>>150700159yes. x-men is a political allegory and warning against the dangers of bigotry and social darwinism. the launch of that comic was either paired with or resulted in a great saturday morning cartoon.new mutants showcased diversity with working class cannonball (from a state with socialist history of mining unionism), a native american dealing with what on the surface looked like mental illness, a young vietnamese refugee with PTSD, an abused conservative coming out of her shell, and a brown guy that had to deal with his wealthy and corrupt father, who allied himself with the bourgeois hellfire club. the class consciousness also had a flipside, with the lumpenproletarian morlocksage of apocalypse, cable and bishop are all examples of heavy reliance on political and social dystopian themes. liberal writers (especially bendis) who decided to take x-men to a fascist ethnostate have done extreme harm to the franchise. in the beginning around AvX it was showing itself, but by the time writers have bishop napalming a future version of south america just so cyclops can be right and beast can be wrong, it took a serious turn for the worse. Remender's Uncanny X-Force is the exception to the rule that all recent x-men, certainly at least since bendis, is utter garbage.
>>150707684not putting cheaper collections or versions on newstands is a mistake. the gloss comic books can be in comic stores but the industry needs to expand, ESPECIALLY in the era where everybody knows these superheroes from the movies and might be interested one day in picking up a cheap read of a character they love
>>150709816What did he say about it?
>>150710966Comics shifted from newsstands to direct market because newsstands were unreliable, stole unsold comics to resell, damaged comics and more. In my country you can find big two comics in supermarkets or newsagents but they don't really sell.
>>150704858>>150705882I saw an interview with Thomas a bit after the release of Avengers: Age of Ultron and he said he was surprised to find Disney sent him a check for co-creating Ultron and (this version of) Vision.Basically Disney pays creators some money so they won’t go to the press and complain that they aren’t getting paid; Ed Brubaker turned it down for that reason but it probably seemed like a lot of money to a mostly retired comic book writer, whatever the amount was.So that probably explains why he’s been trying to claim credit for more characters created when he was EiC. A credit for Wolverine means more hush-money payments.
>>150711261>Basically Disney pays creators some money so they won’t go to the press and complain that they aren’t getting paidniggas on /co/ are so mind-fucked by corporations that they type this shit up to make it look like the billion dollar conglomerate is a victim of extortion.
>>150711207>Comics shifted from newsstands to direct market because newsstands were unreliable, stole unsold comics to resell, damaged comics and more.And yet when they were on newsstands they massively outsold today's comics by an order of magnitude.>in b4 someone blames low sales on competing forms of entertainment like video gamesThat'd be a really good argument except the real problem is still cost. If games are expensive *and* comics are expensive and customers have to choose between them, then customers will choose the expensive thing that supplies them with many more hours of entertainment than a decompressed glossy floppy can provide.>they don't really sell.Yeah, because of the price. They simply aren't good value for money.
>>150711340They’re not victims of extortion, no. They’re bribing the creators not to make bad publicity for them.
>>150711428>>150711340“Hush money” was the wrong choice of words and the first time a term has ever been used incorrectly on the internet.
>>150711186He blamed on them for getting Hal’s character wrong to get Ollie over.https://web.archive.org/web/20201107233603/https://www.comicboards.com/php/show.php?msg=greenlantern-2005060323124200
>>150705000I remember Erik Larsen saying about ten years ago that “cheap” paper isn’t as cheap as you think anymore, and sometimes newsprint is more expensive because it’s now a less common “specialty” option. Cheap comics in modern terms might mean a floppy that feels like a grocery store circular.
>>150711346>when they were on newsstands they massively outsold today's comics by an order of magnitudeThis isn't necessarily true and in fact it is a lot more complicated/nuanced than that. How much did comics sell? Before Batman Year One, Batman was selling 75,000 issues a month, a low not seen since the 1970s, whilst Batman Year One (1987) sold on average 193,000 copies per issue (four issues, #404-407), and was considered a huge success. Absolute Batman #1 from last year (2024) sold 400,000 issues, broken down to 250,000 in its first print, then the rest from second, third and black & white runs. Of course that is a number #1 issue but issue #5 sold around 140,000 and is remaining steady around that, with other Absolute books over 100,000 (Wonder Woman and Superman). What is my point here? That a bunch of successful books in the past were on the levels of hundreds of thousands and not as big as one might assume. The 90s speculator boom skews what is considered a success to people but successful books sold in the hundreds of thousands. Newsstand distribution was simply bad, local distributors sent out the books and it was inconsistent as to who got what, constant ordering problems. Unsold books were not returned, covers were removed and sent back then not even that so they resold unsold books, which influenced future print runs. Unsold books were not counted towards sales, unlike the direct market which didn't allow for returns. Basically the whole direct market is responsible for saving a bunch of comics publishers.I know the narrative of /co/ is "put them on the newsstands". But the simple truth is: the newsstands caused problems, the current entrenched model had benefits but now causes problems. Returning to old models won't magically fix the problems because it is complicated, encompassing everything from competition, to price (like you mention), , to entrenched industry/creative issues, all the way to cultural baggage.
>>150700268That's $3.57 adjusted for inflation.
>>150711346Following on from my post here: >>150711980I would generally recommend you read some books such to gain more background, such as:>Slugfest: Inside the Epic, 50-year Battle between Marvel and DC>Marvel Comics: The Untold StoryThis idea that "newsstand sold amazingly and everything was good until they stopped using the newsstands" is simply not true. Marvel and DC didn't constantly rise, there was times of success and times of strife. The reason why they constantly had gimmicks and failures in the past was because of this. It was a low profit margin business with short creative turn arounds and treated like disposable entertainment. Newsstands aren't the pinnacle you think of them as. The truth is more nuanced.
>>150711980Meanwhile in 1982>It should be noted that early in the sales year Marvel had instituted a policy of canceling any continuing newsstand color title featuring whose average per-issue sales were less than 125,000 copies. It wasn't because titles selling less than 125,000 were unprofitable. According to Jim Shooter, Marvel's editor-in-chief at the time, break-even sales for newsstand titles were just above 80,000 copies an issue. The reason for the new policy was that resources were considered better spent on new titles with hopefully more commercial appeal. That said, three titles--Doctor Strange, Power Man & Iron Fist, and Marvel Tales--were spared the ax in 1982-1983. Doctor Strange was most likely kept going because the baroque visuals that were characteristic of the series made it a magnet for fan-favorite artists, and would help Marvel maintain its relationships with them. Power Man & Iron Fist was the only continuing series that title-featured an African-American, and a determination to maintain at least some diversity among the publisher's title characters was probably what kept it going. Marvel Tales reprinted the story material from Amazing Spider-Man in the 1960s. The editorial overhead for the title was considerably lower than for comics that featured new material. Its profitability was likely comparable to titles above the cancellation threshold, which is why it was continued.20 years later and direct market-only the cancellation threshold was around 20,000 copies. Though sure, all print media started having difficulties and staying on the newsstands wouldn't guarantee success.
>>150700159The art was way way way better back then
>>150712279Sure, Marvel were of course doing far better than DC with much stronger numbers, but my point still stands that the average successful book pre speculation bubble was selling hundreds of thousands and the direct market was much better for them, hence why they increasingly began to market towards it. Again, I am not defending the state of things, I am simply saying that the matters at hand won't be magically fixed by newsstands.Jim Shooter:> Dazzler and the direct-only titles. Something Shooter did have an exact number for was the number of copies the first Marvel direct-market only comic book sold: Dazzler #1 had orders of 428,000 copies, he said. It was ironic, he said, because an issue featuring a new, untried character had been deliberately chosen for the test so as not to antagonize Marvel’s newsstand accounts. If anything, the enormous orders that the title received only served to underscore even further the enormous potential the emerging comics shop market had.Dazzler in the direct market did insane numbers for them.
So basically, confining comic books to little brick stores only catering to people who read comic books was a mistake?
>>150700159NOPEBut comic book speculators gotta speculate.
>>150707141Ah them olden dayswhen someone wouldn't take five Playboys, telling the blind dude they were funny books....
>>150711207>Buy comic at grocery store>Clerk either puts it in a bag where it gets crumpled or damaged OR he puts a THANK YOU paid for sticker on it because I clearly don't have a receipt
>>150712658No, that’s a symptom not the root cause.
>>150712658>So basically, confining comic books to little brick stores only catering to people who read comic books was a mistake?No, it is more complicated:>Direct market and comic book store model saved comics and improved things for both the publisher and consumer. >The original DM was called a monopoly and broken down. >The 90s crash destroyed comics as a pastime, 50%+ of the shops closed and the culture was gutted. >Diamond was the only distributor in town but it was allowed its monopoly because otherwise the industry would go under. (Diamond did go under recently though, after COVID made a lot of players ditch them.)>These entrenched problems have never been fixed because it is like trying to build something new whilst being on bad foundations you can't step off of, so you can't create new foundations.>Aka, you can't piss off the comic book store model when it is your main income but without pissing them off you will always be beholden to them, creating a quagmire.The problem is more that the history of the industry created a specific set of issues and you can't take things outside of that context.
>>150705882He also waited until Herb Trimpe was dead too
>>150705882https://fourcolorsinners.com/2024/04/04/but-what-i-have-no-one-can-buy-an-exclusive-interview-with-andy-olsen-creator-of-the-first-wolverine/Here have an article.
>>150713582Roy's always been pretty shady and certainly doesn't deserve any real credit for Wolverine, but that article does a hell of a lot of reaching and supposing.
>>150713699Yes it does, but the FOOM contest it talks about does feel like a shady way for them to just comb for ideas.
>>150713699Is it much of a reach? Ultimately the article is about shitting on Roy Thomas' claims and saying Len and John are the real creators. Roy is just lifting from the Lee idea of "I told them to go and do something and they did it but I gave the first idea which means I did it" school of development, which that article just casts doubt on.
>>150711611>He blamed on them for getting Hal’s character wrong to get Ollie over.Kek, to some extent this is all comic fans over all the decades, the same continious story of "not muh". Thanks for the link.
>>150700981>being illiterates who were only really into comics and therefore comics fans creating comics, rather than the older school guys who at least had more influencesTruly, we are all one race, one people
>>150714089He wasn’t wrong tho. It took like forty years for them to realize their mistake.
>>150711346>If games are expensive *and* comics are expensiveGames are not expensive by any metric. They have been 60 buckos for almost 3 decades.
>>150700882Julius Schwartz (b. 1915) became the editor of Batman in 1964 and started the new look era, which stripped away all of the sci fi crap of the 50s and had Batman and Robin just solve street crimes again
>>150712182Most of the people on this board think that the sales right before the consolidation of the direct market were in the hundred of thousands, something that probably wasn't true since the age of Captain Marvel outselling Superman.
>>150714676This isn't about who is right or who is wrong, stop looking at it in these terms. Someone took a failing book and did something different with it in a storyline that is still considered important today, a well reprinted storyline and something that Kurt in that article even acknowledges IS important. Why do you let that nuance get lost with who is right or wrong? It isn't O'Neil's fault that Hal got fucked as a character, he didn't force them to do it until it was fixed. I find it weird how people will often blame one single creator for everything.All comics change. And like that thing about Dark Phoenix, the Claremont run was very well loved/sold well but it didn't speak to Kurt. And Kurt created the way for Jean to come back. And funnily enough, many people view early X Factor as a bad book and that time period as the moment Claremont's run began to falter. Whenever a creator does something else, it will make changes to the characters, particularly superheroe comics as long ongoing soap operas. Fans will often complain, but then sometimes good stories get made. The problem is people feel very all or nothing about characters and things. Don't acknowledge change happens. I am not attacking or criticising Kurt, we all have things we like about characters and takes. I am just saying that it isn't about who is right or wrong in that way.
This is the X general of the moment, no?Has Marvel lost the plot with Sentinels? They seem to have no internal logic as to how the Sentinels can be extensions of the U.S.A. government, yet they can also just flat out try to kill any random mutant they see.
>>150715062Anon, seriously what? Sentinels have always done that and been both. A weapon for anti mutant humans to unleash, sometimes being an official weapon, then going too far. The whole plot of Days of Future Past is what if the Sentinels went too far. The point is: that a machine built to stop mutants can take its programming too far.
>>150715062>how the Sentinels can be extensions of the U.S.A. government, yet they can also just flat out try to kill any random mutant they seeSounds logical to me, anon. What's the problem exactly?
I think X-Men as a whole are really lame compared to the Avengers. It’s always about their persecution and how you’re supposed to pity them.
>>150715062Sentinels were built by Bolivar Trask to save humanity from Mutants. He also made Master Mold, a chief Sentinel with AI and the ability to independently make more Sentinels (basically as a, you can kill me but it can keep going). The X-Men stopped this. His son (Larry) then created a new program which was also stopped. After this Steven Lang built a program for the US government but made them less intelligent and they were weaker. Henry Gyrich (another government baddy) got new Sentinels from Hellfire Club and Shaw, who himself is a Mutant, but was making Sentinels to target his enemies and profit. The Days of Future Past story is about what happens if the Sentinels keep going, even going so far as to target humans because humans can mutate. Sentinels are either weaker robots that can be controlled, or full AI machines that take their programming too far. The allegory of them is how some people in their bigotry, desperation and hubris will destroy themselves.>>150715345Absolutely false. X-Men are first and foremost a superhero team. The allegory has never been always in your face. Claremont run's pinnacle of the persecution allegory was God Loves, Man Kills. But it also had: cosmic sagas like Dark Phoenix, alien stuff like the Brood, magical/demon stuff with characters like Magik in Inferno. Early X-Men is more: misunderstood (Marvel reused ideas, all heroes had stories about PR disasters or being misunderstood). Claremont built the allegory but it was never the only thing about the book. I think the adaptations and comics in the 00s really pushed and broke the allegory in places for general audiences.
>>150715062This ironically sounds like a chatbot trying to learn.
>>150715400Almost all X-Men movies in the last 25 years have been about how mutants are hunted and discriminated against. Forgive me for holding this opinion.
>>150715062>extreme measures taken by the government under the guise of "peacekeeping and for safety" ends up being an instrument of their genocidal tendencieswow who would've knew
>>150700159Pretty much defined a new era for comics, not the best probably but still counts
>>150700268>>150704957The retardedly high prices and lack of any place to buy them really is the only thing stopping comics from mainstream success.>But what about the confusing storiesMost comics fill in the reader to what they need to know for it to be enjoyable except for some retarded writers who decide to dump background shit into the forefront. DC has a shitload of reboots too so theres little catching up to do for a specific character.
Sure
>>150700159>Did it deserve the success?Like every comic that sold a million or more, Todd's Spider-Man #1, Rob's X-Force #1, the Image #1s, etc, the answer is "yes and no". Retailers massively over-ordered, and the sales figures are based on how many copies they ordered, not how many they actually sold, speculators bought multiple copies in the mistaken belief these books would be valuable investments for the future, BUT a lot of the kids and teens that actually read comics were genuinely excited about these books, and they all would've been best-sellers of their time even without the speculators and the over-ordering, they just wouldn't have numbers as insanely high.X-Men #1 is a perfectly cromulent X-Men comic that does a good job of introducing the cast for any new readers, and balancing that with a lot of action. It finally got the team back to a normal status quo after the previous years of the team being divided and scattered, while igniting a new conflict with their archenemy and his new henchmen.Ironically the only people who hate and seethe about this comic are the hardcore 1980s X-fags who genuinely believe Magneto is supposed to be a good guy and are seething about him being a villain again like the genocidal supremacist megalomaniac terrorist is supposed to be, and about Claremont leaving after this storyline (as much as they pretend there's a massive drop in quality afterwards, it's mostly still the same, just without Muh Fetishes). But those guys will still continuously bring this comic's sales up to flex on other fandoms.
>>150710966>>150711207>>150711346i really don't understand why this argument keeps popping up when we all know that comic books are far more easily picked up than bullshit magazines and whatever paparazzi shit about some celebrity no one cares about and some sudoku puzzles
>>150716154uncanny x-force was about mutants hunting or death squadding threats that were planning to discriminate against them. it was also about social darwinism (apocalypse) and how mutants wanting to use total domination to become the apex species is a bad thingendangered species was about beast after the fallout of "no more mutants" and trying to save mutants through science, willpower and critically thinking about what's truly moraliirc necrosha was about a villainess using dead bodies from a mutant genocide to wield power? in this case, i would argue that the discrimination is the background noise, not the main story
