A day late.......
A day late and a dollar short. In concern extreme loyal but abusive fans. Look at the good side you have some very loyal fans. I would argue the original ideals behind Captain America, Ironman, Thor and Hulk worked in the past. I at one point in my past each of them and like them. Secondary we as normal humans our lives are not solved in year or 100 issues. Even IF we do learn whatever, we still have problems both past and new ones in the futures. SO I do not see radically changing Captain America, Ironman, Thor and Hulk and hope they will sell and at the expense of your loyal readers.

HOWEVER, I do see that some changes are in order. Because we ( the reader) each change over the years. Things that were import to us in the past may not be important now or in the future.

The comic market and well as the rest of the economy sucks. It is harder to sell thing today. That is not the character fault. It is my opinion that marvel some rely not radically changing Captain America, Ironman, Thor and Hulk. BUT simply telling good stories that are illustrated by the very best.

Noppie

Posted by Noppie on 2008-05-12 20:11:44
I don't think anyone will care about Red Hulk versus Thor considering it's being written by Loeb and can (thankfully) be ignored by the rest of the Marvel Universe titles.

Posted by Rawnzilla on 2008-05-12 21:12:50
Never knew that much about the online fan community, I've only been part of it for about a year now, but from what I've seen I agree. There's already talks about Thor "jobbing" to the Red Hulk over on the Newsarama boards. I'm personally looking forward to it.

Posted by doncorswhazie on 2008-05-13 03:22:16
Yes, it's like we re-discovering characters, when we tought nothing new could happen to them.Thanks for that.
What about Ant-Man ? Cause 'The Shrinking Man' is one of my favourite books ever.
Ant-Man the movie ?
Ant Man the ongoing ?
I prefered Hank Pym as Doctor Pym, using Pym Particles...

Posted by notapotatoe on 2008-05-13 03:31:37
I don't know much about Iron Man before Michelinie & Layton, but in the case of Thor and Hulk, it's probably worth noting the books were pretty bad before they were taken over by Simonson and David, respectively. I also remember very well that when PAD took over Hulk, he came over to rec.arts.comics on usenet and asked us what we thought about the book -- and he was not always well-received. He earned the respect for his run by hard work and by not leaving when his work was critiqued. I think in the long run, Brubaker's run will be held up like the runs Tom mentions, for the same reasons: the run has a long storyline that plays out via numerous interesting shorter arcs; the supporting cast becomes interesting as it plays against the main character; and it presents fundamental challenges to the main character that ultimately lead you to a more interesting, nuanced understanding and appreciation of what makes the character a hero.

Posted by lewandow on 2008-05-13 08:45:03
If I am ever going to get shot at, I hope I can hide behind a comic book creator because they must have the thickest skin on the planet.

Posted by bigdaddyhub2 on 2008-05-13 10:06:49
In Hindsight, can you really blame the fans?
Thor got crap treatment for years after Simonson left, as Defalco and Frenz, once highly regarded creators, were allowed to brutally ape the work of Stan and Jack FOR YEARS... After they finally left, Thor was crapped on some more by creators that followed. It did get good again with Jurgens and Romita Jr, but after John Romita Jr. left, Thor tumbled because it didn't have an artist stay more than an arc. What are fans supposed to do (especially with comics being so pricey) show patience? I'll show patience with my opinions the day you mail me free comics every month. I show enough patience by foolishly continuing to buy and read certain things that I hope will get better. If something isn't to my liking, I have a few options.

A) Quietly voice my opinion and hope somebody actually read it. ( I ask you, how many times have you ever seen THAT get anybody's attention?)

B) Don't say anything, just vote with my wallet. (I'm not that much of a robot)

C) Loudly and directly critique.

I have no problems with supporting option #3. You guys have far more butt kissing lovefests online than you do bashers, so is it REALLY that bad to take it in the @@@*!@&@$ when you deserve it?

If the internet killed one myth, it was the myth that all fans are happy. For years, Marvel and DC RARELY would print a bad letter. I had no idea that so much negativity existed, and I'd much rather see it than have anybody trying to pull the wool over my eyes about how most of the readers felt.

Posted by Dusty. on 2008-05-13 23:04:55
"These were also tough boards in terms of inclusion. I saw more than one creator actively chased away from communicating directly with the readers by that small but vocal and entitlement-driven segment of the fanbase who'd accost them about how they were handling the book and the character in question. On each one, there was a doctrine, a dogma, and if you weren't down with it, you were at the very least in for some tough times."

I think you may have just described some of the more harsher critics of BND on the spidey section of CBR's message board.

Seriously, you would think theres a thousand plus page bible out there somewhere on how to write Peter Parker and comics in general hanging around there enough.

Posted by Dr. Chaos on 2008-05-14 02:33:08
Core again
Regarding the success of 'Iron Man' on screens is good omens for Marvel Heroes on theatre, and the plaaning till 2011 published in Newsarama won't contradict me.
So of course I'm happy to rediscover the Core 4 as I never saw them before ,due to the movies - it helps to think in movement-, but it looks like to me that such characters like 'Fantastic Four' , 'Daredevil' or 'Ghost Rider' had been kinda sacrified.
What have been done with 'Iron Man' could have been done with the characters I enonciated; the 'Iron Man' success arrives when nobody believed on it, and were already sick of super-heroes on screen, plus he (IMMovie ) merged as a 'super-hero' movie as it should be done.
What you're doing is JUST silly,crappy marketing, nothing else ( if someone says :'welcome to the world, I shoot him ).
It will take some time to make us forget Elektra and Matt' meeting in the children garden. So you asked Louis LeTerrier this year, I hope you'll continue with European movie-makers.
yeah really, I like to hear your comments when I dream about a 'Daredevil 2' by Michele Soavi, with DD fighting the Gladiator and Death-Stalker. After that, 'Daredevil 3 ' by Timur Bekmanbetov adapting 'The tree of knowledge' story-arc, and after that 'Daredevil 4' by Christophe Gans who'd be 'Elektra lives again'. No ? Heard about these guys ?
And why not play a Mc Guffin in 'Fantastic Four 3', with the Mole Man attacking New-York with a Godzilla monster, and the FF got him about twenty minutes, and after that Reed discovers the Negative Zone.
In fact you almost disguted from what I love the most, comic-books.
I'll used the Joyce'sentence about Freud and Jung in 'The end of the world news' by Anthony Burgess :
'I contain you all'
'

Posted by bulgarianyogurt on 2008-05-14 04:18:46
Who will play Thor...
... In the upcoming Thor movie?

Will it be Triple H, Fabio, or some other dude?

Posted by Aziroth on 2008-05-14 12:26:10
Hung up on fan responses?
Why do you keep talking about fans and how they respond negatively? So many of your blogs are written about that theme in one way or another. Why so hung up on the issue?

Because whenever you write about the fans, I get the feeling you are tired of hearing us fans complain. I hope I am wrong, honestly, but I can't help but feel I as a fan won't be listened to, legitimate beef or not, because you don't want to hear it.

I'd say just take the fan arguments with a grain of salt. Not everyone's going to be right and some of the opinions will be conflicting, but it doesn't mean the fans should be ignored. Just have to sort those opinions out better. Know when to listen (like in Spiderman's OMD) and when to just ignore them (say... the fact that Iron Man is a jerk).

Now stop talking about fan quirks already. It's getting old. *L*

Posted by DRock1 on 2008-05-15 18:56:14
Fans just want good stories.
Really. If a fan complains it is because they want a better story. They will complain if they find fault with a story or think that there is a fault. They complain when a marketing decision masquerades as a story. In my opinion OMD/BND and the Spider Man un-masking was pure marketing.
If you've been following a character for years and a writer wants to take the character 'In a bold new direction!', then you should be prepared for a character shredding. And the writer should be ready to hear the complaints about that shredding. I think that Marvel in the past few years has worked hard at getting old time fans angry. Civil War was specifically designed to get a hate storm going and thanks to a lot of bad writing, writers venting political views and a near non-existent editorial oversight policy it worked.

The internet can be an angry place. I don't blame a lot of writers for staying away from it, though I think many cruise it under the cover of a false name. But there are boards out there where the moderators clamp down on abuse. The trick is to find them.

Mark_S

Posted by Mark_S on 2008-05-19 18:19:38