CNN spoils Marvel’s big news
Posted in news by Jean-Claude Van Doom
Showing yet another failure of Civil War, the event’s biggest moment (and the long-rumored death of someone more substantial than Clor) takes place in a peripheral book. Now, if you don’t want your Wednesday spoiled, don’t click on the link below. Unfortunately, I happened across it by surprise and ruined my reading. And, yes, expect some comment on this “event” to be forthcoming.
I didn’t click the link, but I saw it on Yahoo! just when I walked in the door with my comic books.
I didn’t even mean to go to Yahoo! It’s my goddamn homepage.
Haha, yeah, I can’t wait to hear what people are going to be saying about CNN and Marvel. This is bigger than when Jason Todd turns out to be Batman’s uncle.
Just for the record, not all of us here at the Legion of Doom consider mainstream publicity, selling out every copy at every store in town, forcing Marvel into a second printing due the next week, and getting people back into comics stores after years away to be a “failure.”
oh, suck an egg.
oh, suck an egg.
I didn’t mean to post that twice. Silly comebacks aside, I didn’t say that I consider Civil War to be a failure. I said it had failed in various ways. All that’s been well covered before.
Was it commercially successful? Yes. But it’s not my job, as a critic, to rely on sales figures to say if something’s good or not. I read things and form my opinions of them, and I share those opinions. And just because I dislike something doesn’t mean it’s going to fail, but also, just because something succeeds doesn’t mean I have to like it. There’s a reason we so often hear of movies that are “commercial successes” and “critical failures” and vice versa.
When I say something fails, I refer to the content of the story, of the book, not of how many units it moves. So, if we’re going to argue about this, let’s at least make sure we’re on the same page.
Okay, so now that we’re on the same page, how is this “yet another failure of Civil War” ?
I mean, all I can tell from your post is that it was a failure that this event happened outside of Civil War. As if there’s some kind of rule that all big events descending from the events of Civil War have to happen in the miniseries.
So is it a creative failure that the Marvel Universe shows implications of the events of Civil War? Isn’t Marvel doing exactly what most – if not all – of us called for them to do, and making their big events have actual implications on the rest of their universe?
It undermines the Civil War mini-series that the biggest impact of it comes weeks later and in a separate book. This is a big event for Captain America, but it’s not a big event as far as Civil War. It only reinforces the disjointedness and lack of impact that continuously cropped up within Civil War.
And I don’t want to get into rehashing my problems with Civil War. If you do, swell, but find another dancing partner.
You guys and your hyperbole. I swear, I’m starting to wonder if you and Finny actually read it or if you just looked at the pictures.
What exactly was hyperbolous about JCVD’s statement that Cap’s death was the biggest impact of Civil War? I might agree with him. I mean, it’s not like in Infinite Crisis they killed Earth-2 superman a week after IC ended. Honestly, the first thing i thought after i read Cap was “Huh…why the hell didn’t they do that in Civil War?”
And I wonder why you feel the need to stake the position that our opinions aren’t valid. But I guess it’s perfectly fine for you to ask for an explanation of what we mean, and then just write off that explanation with a clever phrase.
It’s perfectly fine for you to disagree, but I like to think I manage to disagree with you and not treat you like a wino on a street corner, shouting about the world’s impending doom.
(and that, my friend, is what hyperbole actually looks like)
Well, as someone who read Civil War and thought it was okay but not great, I can clearly tell that Civil War wasn’t about Captain America’s death. As someone who read Captain America #25, I can see that Captain America’s death didn’t have anything to do with – yet clearly grew out of – the events of Civil War. And so as someone who thinks that’s a pretty far cry from a “failure” – which is about as extreme as you can get – I’m going to reply, kids.
But it sure is much more fun to say that the series had no impact or call that a failure or a huge disaster or say it sucks or is an embarrassment to the comics industry (not all attributed to JCVD, by the way, just examples of quite a bit of Civil War critic hyperbole).
I know you felt the need to clarify your job as a critic and opinion-sharer, but nowhere in that job description is there a right to not have people disagree with you. And when your response to disagreement is an avoidance of defending your points, that doesn’t make the points look all that strong.
So far, I have not seen a SHRED of Civil War criticism that isn’t ridiculously arbitrary and nit-picky and not applied even-handedly to any other books. It’s largely ad hominem and thus virtually impossible to use in any kind of discussion.
So to address the dismissal that Civil War was full of a lack of impact, do you not consider the unmasking of Spider-Man to have impact? Do you not consider the split of the Fantastic Four to have impact? Do you not consider all non-registered superheroes now being classified criminals to not have impact? Do you not consider the Initiate to have impact?
See, when a statement comes along like Civil War doesn’t have impact, when anyone who read the book can clearly see that’s a ridiculous overstatement, that comes off as hyperbolic and meaningless. So just expect people to respond and not take “I already said my peace” as a convincing defense.
I never said Civil War didn’t have impact. I said it lacked impact in places. If you take everything I say and turn it into an over-arcing declaration, then sure, it becomes hyperbole. Now, when I say lack of impact, I’m referring largely to the emotional impact. Meaning that the big events of the series (and it did have plenty), didn’t resonate with me.
I could go point by point of what I’ve said and what you’ve said and explain this out further, but what I really want to get across is that I don’t feel the need to write a dissertation of my views on Civil War. I don’t like thinking about the book, I don’t like writing about it, I just want to drop it.
Of course, it’s hard to not reference it in context to Captain America’s death, and so I did. But you apparently feel the need to take a quick comment posted in all of about 30 seconds amid a busy news day and create a trial on whether I know what I talk about when it comes to criticism.
So, look, we’ve already wasted another thousand words debating a topic that we simply disagree on. Just leave it at that. We’re not going to convince each other, and you turning it into a personal issue just makes me wonder why I bother. I’ll give my thoughts on Cap’s death for the book of doom, but aside from that, I’m done with Civil War. So just leave. it. be.
Just for future reference, when people disagree with your points, it’s not personal. And if you don’t want to defend points, don’t make them. I think that should pretty much settle it. See you on Saturday!
Man, I’m glad I’ve been off the internet for three days.