Hindsight is a tricky thing, and that is no more true than in the comic industry. Some things may look cool to the eyes of a twelve year old, but as those eyes age, they can see how awful the idea really was. Other times, a concept may seem shitty at the time, but when looked back upon, it actually was pretty interesting. What comic concepts fall into either category for you?
Cool before/sucks now:
Onslaught: Yeah, I’ll say it. As a kid, I thought Onslaught looked kinda cool. He was like a giant Magneto with Professor X’s powers and was pwning everybody! How could that go wrong! Looking back on it, I now see Onslaught pushed comics back 5 years.
Carnage: Again, HE LOOKED SO COOL! And he was a CRAZIER version of Venom! And his game had a RED CARTRIDGE! But really, Carnage wasn’t much of an interesting character. He only really worked as a foil to Venom at best, and that was debatable. I’m glad Sentry launched him into space.
Azrael-Batman: Ninjas are cool. Technology is cool. Batman is cool. A Batman with a high-tech suit and crazy ninja skills should be awesome. It wasn’t.
Thought sucked before but like now:
Iron Spidey: Yeah, that’s right. Iron-Spidey was cool. Anybody who was here two years ago knows I was a huge hater at the time it was announced, but once Civil War was over and done, and the costume put away for good, I realized that it was actually rather cool looking. I’m glad it was reused for the Scarlet Spiders, and I hope Pete gets to put it on again someday. Seeing it in this week’s Amazing just reminded me how awesome it was.
#1 issues. I almost always purchased #1 issues of crappy comics. Darkhawk #1. Deathlok #1. Sleepwalker #1. Secret Defenders #1. Cage #1. It was cool back then to brag to all your friends… but now not so much. There was just a slew of new titles coming out and you had to get the first issue of each and every crappy book.
not then/not now
Michael Turners art. fuck him. good job on making everyone you draw look identical, fascist.
edit-because apathy-inc is having a hissy fit over my opinion in a thread based around opinions
disliked then/like now:
ultimate whatever
most marvel books, I had a hard time jumping in due to the usually extensive continuity.
liked then/dislike now:
random 90s comics
venom, I never really “got” the character. I always thought the green goblin was cooler because he had a more personal impact on spider-man.
The thread is for opinions on art and such, not the artists themselves.
Making personal attacks against someone you likely don’t know and/or have never met isn’t keeping in good taste or on topic.
If you had kept it about his artwork I wouldn’t have a problem.
It is possible to say you don’t like an artist’s work without personally insulting them.
ok, Ill rephrase it so I dont sound like such an uncouth barbarian.
I dislike his artwork, both his male and female characters all have very similar/identical features with the exception of hairstyle swapping and power girls big titties. with that in mind I dont think he really deserves the fame he has gained. there is so little variety in his figures that it becomes boring and annoying to even look at (for me at least)
at least his identical characters look more consistent than what rob liefeld churns out.
I used to think superman was a damn stupid character. He is invincible, even when they kill him he just comes back. How could he possibly be an interesting hero if he is so invincible.
Well now I know how ignorant I really was. I have picked up a lot more comics (while before I really hadn’t read any superman) and now I understand better now what makes him appealing. I really enjoy superman comics now (all star has been really great, and I love the anything that uses KC superman), and I recently heard someone giving the same argument that I used to use against superman. Hopefully I can get them to read some, and learn what I learned.
Actuly i was about to say the same thing: I also thought that Supes was kinda lame being so powerfull and so perfect. But after i read more stuff and “grew” up i realized that he has alot more depth than that
I used to think the New FF with GR, spiderman, hulk, wolverine was cool. But when i went back to the comci store to buy the back issues and was kinda like “eh…”
thought you were talking about the sliver armored spidey
I used to think that comics-related adaptations were cool–e.g. a film adapted into comics, or a major comics arc adapted into a novelization. I mean, here was all the greatness of (whatever it was at first), compressed into the handy size of (whatever it was turned into)! How can you fuck with that?
It was, of course, almost universally terrible.
On the other hand, I have a couple of Spider-Man anthologies (non-comics, like, actual short stories with no pictures in them) that I think I appreciate now more than I did then. It’s an interesting and underused format for superhero stories.
