[Bitching Thread VI] A Brand New Day (for bitching)

Weaver

And then, after all of that, you shack up with a cat lady.

High fives all around.

Solar

The real best thing about Pym

is that he doesn't do all that because he is just a cool guy or whatever

he does all that despite proclaiming that he is going to take up his dead wife's secret identity in order to defend the honour of all women everywhere

He makes a grandiose, meaningless proclamation, and then dicks all over it, but in both cases he means so well

it's just that he is a hilariously awful superhero

noir_blood

My bitch is something Andrew Garfield said about why Spiderman is so quippy during fights.

You feel the power of it, the power of not being seen, the power of the mask. Peter becomes witty when he's got that protective layer. It's like he's on a message board. He's got the anonymity of the Internet within that suit, and he can say whatever the hell he likes, and he can get away with anything. He can f**k with people and there's no consequences because nobody knows who the hell he is. We all know how powerful and potentially dangerous that anonymity is.

It basically makes Spidey sound like a well, internet troll, and it also fails to mention the reason why he really does it-that he's scared. Plus you know, it basically sounds as he ignores the whole "with great power.." motto.

Harry Dresden

noir_blood wrote: »

My bitch is something Andrew Garfield said about why Spiderman is so quippy during fights.

You feel the power of it, the power of not being seen, the power of the mask. Peter becomes witty when he's got that protective layer. It's like he's on a message board. He's got the anonymity of the Internet within that suit, and he can say whatever the hell he likes, and he can get away with anything. He can f**k with people and there's no consequences because nobody knows who the hell he is. We all know how powerful and potentially dangerous that anonymity is.

It basically makes Spidey sound like a well, internet troll, and it also fails to mention the reason why he really does it-that he's scared. Plus you know, it basically sounds as he ignores the whole "with great power.." motto.

Sounds right to me.

Robos A Go Go

Yeah, I never got the sense that he quipped to hide his fear, even early in his career.

Antimatter

yeah that sounds right coming from Garfield, to me

say this as someone who grew up on Silver Age Spidey

Harry Dresden

Antimatter wrote: »

yeah that sounds right coming from Garfield, to me

say this as someone who grew up on Silver Age Spidey

It's great we're finally getting a snarky Spider-man in the films. Tobey's was good but it lacked the trickster nature Spidey has always had.

WiseManTobes

Robos A Go Go wrote: »

Yeah, I never got the sense that he quipped to hide his fear, even early in his career.

Yet I swear I've heard him say that is exactly why he quips, time to dig into the back issues!

TexiKen

WiseManTobes wrote: »

Robos A Go Go wrote: »

Yeah, I never got the sense that he quipped to hide his fear, even early in his career.

Yet I swear I've heard him say that is exactly why he quips, time to dig into the back issues!

I will back this up, I've seen it somewhere too. Maybe when talking to Daredevil or Captain America? I want to say Daredevil.

Harry Dresden

WiseManTobes wrote: »

Robos A Go Go wrote: »

Yeah, I never got the sense that he quipped to hide his fear, even early in his career.

Yet I swear I've heard him say that is exactly why he quips, time to dig into the back issues!

His quips are there to throw his enemies off their game. They can't think clearly when they're getting enraged by his antics.

Robos A Go Go

WiseManTobes wrote: »

Robos A Go Go wrote: »

Yeah, I never got the sense that he quipped to hide his fear, even early in his career.

Yet I swear I've heard him say that is exactly why he quips, time to dig into the back issues!

He quips at muggers

Shadowen

These days quipping seems to be him letting you know he's not afraid of you, and also that he thinks you're adorable, but you're still doing bad things and it's time to stop now. It's mind games. He's trying to irritate and intimidate you at the same time.

And when he goes silent, that's when you should run. Because he's usually angry.

When he's talking and not being funny, then he's either scared, or fishing for information.

Centipede Damascus

Kyougu

I think the "I quip cause I'm afraid" came from an early issue in Kevin Smith's Spidey miniseries.

Which you know..it's Kevin Smith.

Linespider5

Kevin Smith dedicated his life to being like a successful version of George Lucas, but somewhere along the way he changed his mind about which successful George Lucas he should be.

cshadow42

Ah, another great moment in comics, brought to us by Kevin Smith. Still can't compare to Batman peeing himself though.

AspectVoid

Kyougu wrote: »

I think the "I quip cause I'm afraid" came from an early issue in Kevin Smith's Spidey miniseries.

Which you know..it's Kevin Smith.

I know for a fact that it is part of Ultimate Spider-Man. During the first Green Goblin arc (I believe it was issue 8), Peter thinks to himself that if he shuts up the fear will overwhelm him and he'll be too afraid to even move. So, he keeps quipping to give himself something to think about other than the fear of fighting the Green Goblin.

Arivia

AvX #1 Spoilers

Spoiler:

So my store (which went X-Men) is handing out free I'm With The X-Men posters with purchases of #1. Great. But why do they have Wolverine with the X-Men on the poster when he aligns with the Avengers in #1?

WiseManTobes

I'm with Frogman! ( Did Frogman pick a side yet?)

Arivia

Why is my local promoting The Secret Service at the front desk I thought they had taste

Kyougu

Cause as horrible as anything from Millar is, it still probably sells more than most comics.

wirehead26

Millar can still do good stuff. Secret Service sounds like it's more grounded in reality so hopefully Millar can tone it down a bit like he did in Superior.

TexiKen

Supercrooks #1 was actually pretty good. It feels like it borrows heavily from Astro City, and that's something decent to aspire to be. Granted there might be some Wanted type "fuck this silly superhero world and fuck you" stuff in the end.

wirehead26

It seemed that Millar got his awful out in Kick-Ass 2 and is going back to writing more subdued stories for the most part. I don't care what anyone else says though, I enjoyed Nemesis. It's Millar's "Bad Boys 2" for me. Bad Boys 2 being the only Bay movie I enjoyed after The Rock. The Island came close to being fun but was too damn boring.

Delduwath

Have you guys heard about the re-coloring stuff in the collected Flex Mentallo? Here's a good article on it:
http://mindlessones.com/2012/04/10/whatever-happened-to-the-mentallium-man-of-tomorrow/

I fully intended to buy Flex Mentallo. I've read it before, it was a difficult read with a lot of big ideas, and I was looking forward to re-reading it and perhaps taking my time with it. Now, I'm a little on the fence. As I understand it, both Morrison and Quitely approved of the new colors. To be honest, in that very first set of comparison scans provided in the Mindless Ones article, I actually kind of like the paler, flatter Flex in the new edition more than the oranger, shaded Flex from the original comic. Not so crazy about everything else, though. The colors in the original look so rich and vibrant compared to the new colors.

I'm a lot more concerned about the whitewashed characters, actually (even though I'm 100% sure it wasn't an intentional thing).

The reality is that this is almost certainly the only way we're going to get a new printing of Flex Mentallo. If I want to own the book, if I want to re-read the story, I'm going to have to deal with the re-coloring. So, ultimately, I'm probably going to buy it. But, I'm still annoyed that this is even a thing.

Antimatter

wow

wooooooooooooooow

man.

Antimatter

original

reprint


FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

Centipede Damascus

no way

TexiKen

Wow, that really was whitewashing. And keep the font the same, whatsamattayou.

I have this on order from my LCS, but seeing this now, I think I'll tell them to cancel it.

Delduwath

There's just so much weirdness going on in there. Like, I'm sure it's not an intentional "oh, let's make this black girl white, mwahahaha!", but rather the general, institutionalized "well, white is default" approach. What I find odd is: didn't the new colorist look at the source material? I don't know, seems like it might have been a useful jumping-off point.

I find it hilarious that the colors of the outfits are switched.

I just don't know. Look at how vibrant that first version of the panel is, and how pale, pastel, drained of color the second one is.

Even the font is different.

wirehead26

Oh man this will lead to a shit storm of bad press. I'm sure Morrison most be fuming about it as well.

Edit: Holy shit I missed that part about Morrison and Quietly approving the new coloring. What the fuck were they thinking?

initiatefailure

i see no reason that needed to be changed. It all seems so arbitrarily different.

Antimatter

the coloring is apparently how Morrison and Quitely wanted it in the first place

“FQ: [On Flex Mentallo] That was the first time I’d been coloured by someone else. When I drew it I had a very clear image in my mind of how it was going to look and it looked very different, mostly in a way I didn’t particularly like. Bits of it worked but too much for me didn’t work, either on personal taste or on storytelling. There are things you can do with colouring that help the narrative flow, and others that can be quite jarring. Peter Doherty (Shaolin Cowboy) is re-colouring it. Peter’s natural palette is quite similar to mine – quite realistic, believable and not super-saturated. Jamie (Grant, All-Star Superman colourist], his natural palette is saturated colours and I think, generally, All-Star Superman worked.”

“First off, Grant wanted the recolouring as he felt the original colour served the story poorly, partially as the technology in 1995 was still pretty primitive so could be improved upon greatly today,and partly because much of it was simply wrong from a narrative point of view. For instance Flex’s world is trapped in a perpetual night, something missed in the original mini-series, but an important story point.”

i doubt they supported the whitewashing, though

wirehead26

I just can't believe neither of them noticed that.

Antimatter

it's an accident of the colorist.

Oh that is unfortunate, not on purpose. I know there's one person who was white and is now black, which hardly balances things. My bad obviously. Which bits do you mean?

Antimatter

and, here's a full list of people changed

Spoiler:

A lot of minor background characters have lost their skin colour, right from the first splash page, which is unfortunate, because background diversity of all kinds is important to the story that's being told.

The prominent examples I've noticed: the big-haired trans character in the toilets in #2, Powder-Pink Teen Ultra-Girl in the Knight Club in #3, and Mandoo the Mysterious in #4. Not a character per se, but striking, the interracial entangling of legs from the first panel inside the Knight Club has been toned down. And two not-black but not-white characters, Walter-Ego in #3 and the gentleman ape superhero in #4, have been given white skin.

Not all of these have been strictly made white, some of them clearly have a different tone than the default, but you need to really look closely to notice that. (Also, its now hard to tell what skin colour some characters have, due to lighting.)

Delduwath

On the subject of "that's how the original creators wanted it": I'm not sure if I care. It's like the whole thing about Lucas shoving characters into newer releases of Star Wars, or putting in new special effects, right? I really didn't want a revamped version. I'm sure that Morrison has grown as a writer since 1996; that doesn't mean I want him to rewrite parts of the comic! I literally just wanted a collection of what was already out there. I wanted to see the thing that so many articles described for me, the thing that so many people fell in love with. I wanted to see what they saw. Generally speaking, I think that a work of art represents the environment it was created in, both ideologically but also technologically. It's a time capsule. I guess I'm probably I'm OK with a recolored, updated version of Flex Mentallo - just like I'd probably be OK with an HD version of "A Trip to the Moon" - if an unaltered version of the original were also available. Here's the director's cut if you want it, but here's the theatrical release that originally affected culture when it came out.

Antimatter

i guess that they just couldn't get the original colors

CorporateLogo

So should I have not read Flex Mentallo last night then

Cause this version is the only way I would be getting my hands on Flex Mentallo at all

Munch

Delduwath wrote: »

On the subject of "that's how the original creators wanted it": I'm not sure if I care. It's like the whole thing about Lucas shoving characters into newer releases of Star Wars, or putting in new special effects, right? I really didn't want a revamped version. I'm sure that Morrison has grown as a writer since 1996; that doesn't mean I want him to rewrite parts of the comic! I literally just wanted a collection of what was already out there. I wanted to see the thing that so many articles described for me, the thing that so many people fell in love with. I wanted to see what they saw. Generally speaking, I think that a work of art represents the environment it was created in, both ideologically but also technologically. It's a time capsule. I guess I'm probably I'm OK with a recolored, updated version of Flex Mentallo - just like I'd probably be OK with an HD version of "A Trip to the Moon" - if an unaltered version of the original were also available. Here's the director's cut if you want it, but here's the theatrical release that originally affected culture when it came out.

This is how I feel about the reprinted Killing Joke. Or the new colors on the Sandman omnibii.

There's something appealing about those old colors, all stark and eye-searing. The trend with every re-colored work I've seen, is to make the colors softer, rounder, and less extreme.

I don't really get it.

Oh, remember how I talked about Thief of Thieves being a blatant attempt by Kirkman, to pitch AMC a TV show?

AMC options Thief of Thieves.

Ugh. I'm actually enjoying the comic, but I hate seeing Kirkman, a guy who I think genuinely likes the comics medium, behaving like such a mercenary.