Category: year in review – 2006

Marketing is such a huge deal in comics today that the way a series or event is marketing can determine whether it succeeds or fails regardless of the quality of the story. A bad series can succeed if it’s marketed correctly, and a good series can get canceled if the company isn’t behind it. Here’s the best way to get the attention of a member of the Legion of Doom.

Civil War

“Marvel’s Civil War marketing. It got a lot of mainstream attention and they’ve pulled in a lot of mainstream ads in the Civil War books.”
-Jim Doom

“I suppose I have to give this to Civil War, which claimed serious mainstream media attention for Marvel through shrewd timing. Of course, the series is also exploitative on a whole lot of levels, but that doesn’t really matter, right?”
-Jean-Claude Van Doom

Keep It Simple

“The best marketing is stuff like Joe’s Fridays and the preview art. It really gives the fans what they want.”
-Doominator

One Year Later

“Launching each of its titles one year into the future was a bold choice for DC. Surely it screwed up a lot of long-term plans writers had laid out. If I was a long-time reader of those titles, I’d certainly be miffed. But in the process, DC created the absolute perfect jumping on point for every single one of its titles. And jump I did.”
-Fin Fang Doom

It seems to be a consensus around here that last year wasn’t a great one at the movies, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t some fine flicks. And while TV saw a few new adaptations, the video game front proved one of the best outlets for comics outside comics.

V for Vendetta

I liked “V for Vendetta” a great deal. Pretty much everything else was fairly bland.
— Doom DeLuise

There may have been problems with the film in how it strayed from the book, but the areas in which the film modernized itself created a fantastic movie that has gotten plenty of non-comics fans talking.
— Jim Doom

Superman Returns

I loved “Superman Returns.” It sent chills down my spine and made me giddy to see a character I used to consider boring fly again.
— Doominator

I don’t know why, but the more I thought of V for Vendetta, the less I liked it. Unnecessary changes from the source material and somehow making the conclusion more cartoony than the comic book left a bad aftertaste. Without much else to choose from, I have to go with Superman Returns, which managed to pay homage to the earlier films while greatly improving on them. On a side note, I probably should’ve taken an easy out and picked Heroes, since it rips off every comic book ever written.
— Jean-Claude Van Doom

Justice League Heroes

I honestly didn’t think I would like this game at all when it came out. I mean, you could only play as two Leaguers at a time, and you didn’t even get to pick which ones like in X-Men Legends. Then I actually played the game, and had an absolute blast. The story was actually not bad, and the voice acting was pretty great. Colonel Doom and I spent hours playing through the game, maxing out the stats on Superman and Hal Jordan, laying out battle plans for the best way to take down the final boss. Outside of the Paul Dini/Bruce Timm animated DC Universe, Justice League Heroes might be the best adaptation of DC characters to date.
— Fin Fang Doom

Welcome to the first installment of our 2006 year end review. Here, we’re taking a look at adaptations of comic books to other media, such as movies and video games. While comics overall had a very strong 2006, there weren’t a lot of films out. Of those, here are our choices for what really, really sucked.

Superman Returns

I just really didn’t like Superman Returns. It had its moments, but I think it could have been a lot better. I’ll leave it at that.
— Fin Fang Doom

X3

I am a huge X-Men nerd. Growing up, I dreamed that an X-Men movie would be made. X2 was a dream come true. I saw it in theater more than any movie before or since. And X3, marvel of marvels, came out on my birthday. Seemed too good to be true. Well, it was. Amazingly, I don’t blame Brett Ratner. The directing was exactly what you expect from Ratner: solid and flashy. What ruined that movie was the studio forcing an insane production speed to compete with Superman Returns and the screenwriters having their hands tied over certain plot points. It may have been my worst birthday, ever.
— Jean-Claude Van Doom

“X3” actively sucked, so I’ll say that’s the worst.
— Doom DeLuise

“X-Men: The Last Stand” was an embarrasment, though. It lacked any substance or real sheen, and was just a collection of random crap.
— Doominator

Once again, the ship has sailed on a year in publishing comics and we here at the Legion of Doom are happy to announce the beginning of our 2006 awards show. Over the coming days, we will be listing our favorites of the year that was, as well as the gunk that took hours to scrape from the bottoms of our shoes.

From the greatness of Paul Dini’s Detective Comics to the visual infection of Michael Turner, from the conclusions of Infinite Crisis to the stirrings of Civil War (and boy, do we ever disagree on that one), you’ll find lots of opinion, a hint of insight and plenty bad jokes.

For an idea of what this will entail, or if you’re just feeling nostalgic, check out our Best and Worst of 2005.

If you’re chomping at the bit for some 2006 action, make sure you check out summaries of the year for the different publishers written up in fine fashion by Fin Fang Doom, available here.

This was a big year for comics outside of the folded paper medium. From movies and TV to video games and toys, it was a good year to be a comic book fan, even if you don’t like to bother yourself with any of that tedious “reading.”

Movies

2006 saw the release of two blockbuster movies featuring two of the biggest franchises from their respective publishers: Superman and the X-Men.

Everyone here at the Legion of Doom took a stab at reviewing Superman Returns, and the reaction was decidedly mixed. To me, retaining the continuity from the first two Christopher Reeve movies was a bad idea. Instead of starting fresh with a timeless character, Bryan Singer & Co. decided to bog the movie down with 20-year-old continuity that a good handful of the viewing audience had no knowledge of, myself included. While Kevin Spacey is a great actor, he played Lex Luthor a little too over the top for my tastes (this is Lex Luthor, not the Joker, after all). And while Brandon Routh did look the part of a Christopher Reeve replacement, I never thought Reeve looked the part of Superman in the first place. I had high expectations going into Superman Returns and left the theater thoroughly disappointed.

On the other hand, my expectations going into the third installment of the X-Men franchise were pretty low. No one I talked to about it had any sort of high hopes with Brett Ratner at the helm. Plus, an increased emphasis on Storm and the rumored deaths of both Cyclops and Professor X did not have me looking forward to this thing. For some reason, Angel was just thrown in there as a plot device when he could have been a vital part of the story. Kelsey Grammar did a wonderful job as Beast, and somehow they were able to perfectly capture the essence of Madrox the Multiple Man in his two short on-screen appearances. I really enjoyed the twist the filmmakers put on the idea of the Phoenix, that it was a repressed part of Jean’s psyche instead of an outside force, and Jean looked pretty damn cool when she tapped into those powers. X-Men: The Last Stand certainly had the coolest displays of mutant powers of any movie in the set, but the story was lacking the whole way through. If you could ignore the story and just enjoy the cool superhero fights, it was a pretty fun experience. You know, just like every comic produced in the early 90s.

V for Vendetta was far and away the best comic book adaptation of the year. The Wachowski Brothers amazed me with their ability to not write a horrible movie. It was a great update on the idea originally presented in the graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, which was heavily rooted in the political landscape of the 1980s. The movie involves civil liberties being revoked, fear-mongering, domestic wiretapping and the government exploiting terrorist acts to fuel support for their own agendas. The amazing thing is that stuff was in the original story, and it just happens to be completely relevant to what’s going on in the Bush administration today. V for Vendetta wasn’t just a great comic book movie; it was a great movie, period.

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An apology in advance, as A Look Back: Small Press 2006 will not be as thorough as it probably deserves to be. It’s not quite as easy to keep track of what happens in smaller companies as it is to keep track of what happens at Marvel or DC. So this review will mostly just cover the books that I read.

Image

Image Comics was more of the same this year. Invincible and The Walking Dead continue to be two of the best comics on the stands today. PvP and the color reprints of Battle Pope dished out a big helping of funny each month (ish). Savage Dragon and Spawn continued their lengthy runs. Fear Agent dealt with scheduling problems and the loss of hyped co-penciller Cory Walker before his work on the title even saw print.

Top Cow and Marvel signed some sort of a deal in 2006 that would allow Marvel the use of some of Top Cow’s talent pool in exchange for Top Cow using some Marvel characters in crossovers. As of right now I think only X-Men/Cyberforce has seen the light of day (which I remember one blogger pointing out was a crossover between a superteam and the direct rip-off of that superteam). Marvel got Tyler Kirkham, who drew a few issues of Amazing Spider-Man. Big whoop.

Dark Horse

Dark Horse celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2006, and took that as an opportunity to re-establish it’s horror roots. They put out a bunch of titles I didn’t read under the heading “Drawing on Your Nightmares.” Cal MacDonald returned in a mediocre Criminal Macabre one-shot in the summer before he starred in a pretty good mini-series that began at the very end of the year. Perhapanauts was my favorite title put out by DH this year, blending sci-fi, horror and comedic elements into one series. Also in 2006 from Dark Horse: a buttload of Conan, Star Wars and manga books.

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Not Civil War

While Civil War was raging throughout the Marvel Universe, there were a few titles that miraculously were able to steer clear of the subject. Maybe it was because they weren’t selling well enough for Marvel to care, or maybe it’s because the Marvel Illuminati had enough respect for the creators to leave them to their own devices. Regardless of the reason, these titles were more often than not the best of the year.

Astonishing X-Men and Runaways were safe from Civil War because Astonishing is set in a non-specific time period and Runaways is set on the west coast. Both titles have a grand overarching plotline that could have been destroyed by forcing them to work in a crossover. And really, who has the talent to tell Joss Whedon or Brian K. Vaughn how to tell a great story?

X-Factor and She-Hulk were two great titles that addressed Civil War right at the beginning of the crossover and then moved on. X-Factor really didn’t even address the situation despite displaying the Civil War emblem on its front cover. They took a stand on the Registration Act, but not once was the team forced to defend that stance to anyone other than the Astonishing X-Men. She-Hulk the title moved on from Civil War even though She-Hulk the character was still deeply embroiled in the action. While X-Factor is a noir serial and She-Hulk is pure superhero fun in a time that there isn’t much of it, the two titles are similar because the dialogue produced by writers Peter David and Dan Slott (respectively) is some of the best being printed in comics today. Unfortunately, both of these titles probably fall under the “don’t sell enough for us to care” umbrella.

Yet Another X-Men Relaunch

All year long seemed to be one big X-Men relaunch, which has become an annual tradition for the House of Ideas.

Probably the biggest change was the removal of long-time X-scribe Chris Claremont from the characters after a second lengthy run on Uncanny X-Men (and X-Treme X-Men before that). Due to health issues, Claremont wasn’t even able to finish his run on Uncanny, and was forced to hand off New Excalibur to Frank Tieri and delay his run on Exiles.

In May, Uncanny X-Men and X-Men got major facelifts with new creative teams and new rosters. Ed Brubaker and Billy Tan took over Uncanny, which featured Professor X, Darwin, Havok, Polaris, Nightcrawler, Marvel Girl and Warpath following Vulcan to the Shi’ar Empire. Mike Carey and Chris Bachalo teamed up on X-Men, with a roster consisting of Rogue, Iceman, Mystique, Cable, Cannonball, Lady Mastermind and Karima something-or-other (please give here a codename!). Both titles were immediately better than they had been in years.

Perhaps the best part of the X-Men relaunch meant all the X-books would be occupied elsewhere while the Civil War was going on. The Uncanny team was in space. The adjective-less team was globe-trotting. Astonishing was just too good. Instead of thrusting the already top-selling X-Men titles into an already over-crowded crossover to produce a slight sales jump, Marvel let them do their own thing and produce the best year for X-Men comics in recent memory. (more…)

For Marvel, 2006 was all about Civil War. Nearly every comic Marvel put out set in the 616 universe at the very least mentioned Civil War. Caught at the center of the struggle was Spider-Man, who revealed his identity to the world at Iron Man’s behest. While many series devoted entire arcs to the crossover, many of the best series of the year steered clear of the crossover as much as possible. The X-Men line of comics in particular prospered in 2006, due in no small part to completely avoiding Civil War. Also in 2006, Marvel reinvigorated its once popular cosmic characters by launching Annihilation and sending the Hulk into outer space, and revisited several properties from its past in mini-series and specials.

Civil War

When Marvel launched Civil War in May, I was pretty pessimistic about the whole thing. After the crap that was House of M, I was uncertain of the current administration’s ability to pull off a major crossover. And how would anything at Marvel be able to compete with the sheer awesomeness of DC’s Infinite Crisis?

After the first three issues, I thought Marvel really had a chance to pull off what we’ve all been waiting for: a crossover that not only impacts the Marvel Universe in a meaningful, long-lasting way, but is a damn good story in and of itself. The mini-series itself was well thought out and well paced. Amazing Spider-Man was telling a great story featuring Peter Parker making the worst decision of his life. Fantastic Four told a nice story about how such a divisive issue would affect a close-knit group like the FF. She-Hulk, Thunderbolts and Civil War: Frontline were doing a good job of showing how the heroes that (ironically, in one case) weren’t on the frontline were choosing to deal with the Superhuman Registration Act. I even enjoyed the few issues of New Avengers I read.

Then came the delay, and the internet broke in half (and only a year too late!).

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DC had a huge amount of momentum heading into 2006. Infinite Crisis, their biggest crossover in 20 years, was at its halfway point. They rode that momentum into the One Year Later launch in March, and followed that up with the historic weekly series 52. And somehow DC managed to retain a cohesive universe throughout the whole thing. Towards end the year, DC focused its attention on the Wildstorm universe, relaunching the entire line with A-list creators.

Infinite Crisis

DC got it right. This was a major crossover that actually did matter. DC history was re-written after the end of Infinite Crisis. There was a major status quo change regarding the multiverse. Infinite Crisis reached every comer of the DCU and produced a damn fine story in the process.

I’m not going to lie and say the art thing didn’t bother me. The art quality was inconsistent and it did hurt the story. But as much as Tom Brevoort wants to use that as an excuse to justify Marvel’s screw-ups, it just wasn’t much of an issue in the grand scheme of things. The story was strong… so strong that it would have been good even if Rob Liefeld was on art. But if it wouldn’t have come out in a relatively timely manner, the impact would have been lost in the shuffle of the DC Universe moving on without it. Besides, DC even went back and redid some of the art for the hardcover they put out. Problem solved.

That whole “Superboy punched a wall” continuity catch-all that came out of all this could get pretty annoying if they go back to it too often, though.

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