Capt. America vs. Batman

[PeepsChicken]

I have to keep repeating is because certain people keep glossing over things and refusing to use common sense.

No, you have to keep repeating it because certain people have the audacity to keep disagreeing with the quackery you're labeling "common sense." You're taking your own subjective tastes, using the factors that led you to develop those tastes, and treating your conclusions like they're some sort of objective outcome. They aren't.

 

And no one, especially not me, ever made that claim. You're making a strawman argument here, as usual.

No, but you're the one trying to put the stories up on a pedestal in order to discount the modern stuff.

 

No, that's "not it". Yes, some are classic because of their historic value, but not because of age. There are plenty of very old comics that are not at all classics. They do not stand out because of their quality. Many of the Silver and Bronze Age comics are classics precisely because of their great stories and art. Many of those won awards, such as the Archie Goodwin/Walt Simonson Manhunter saga, or the Denny O'Neil/Neal Adams run on Batman. These are not classics because of age, but because of quality. It's whhy they won awards. They don't give awards to comics for age.

You're citing really good runs on books, but those runs are the outliers. Yes, more than likely, the "award winning" runs are good runs. That's almost a tautological argument. We're not talking about just the cream of the crop, but the bulk of the work put out there in the silver and golden ages. A great, great amount of it is crap. It's sometimes charming crap, but it's crap nonetheless.

 

Another strawman. I never said that every character Kirby created was great or even good. However, I defy you to name me one single other comic book creator who has created so many great characters, who has churned out such a large volume of fantastic work, who was so adored and admired by other artists and fans as well. They call him The King for a reason, and it's because of his legendary talent, not age or anything else.

You really, really need to learn what a strawman is before you accuse somebody else of making one. It's ironic that you accuse me of making a strawman, and two sentences later try to re-craft the argument in a fashion you can win. Of course nobody can compare to his volume of work or his admiration by everybody. I never said otherwise.

 

My thesis has been that categorically disregarding anything from some arbitrary point mid-80's onward as "low quality" is foolish; there's ample good work amongst the bad in recent comics. Likewise, there was ample low quality work from before that period, and even "The King" wasn't immune to it. The work of Kirby and Lee and so on was largely a product of their time, and it could never be recreated. Lee, for example, has floundered in the past 20 or 30 years. How many failed creations, books, and offerings has he had?

 

You're preaching to the choir and trying to set up another strawman argument. I never said that Superman stories were all great, or all or even most DC stories from back then. What I did say in actuality (and which you chose to ignore) was that the Silver and Bronze Ages produced a much higher percentage of quality comics than any other ages or years. And that fact stands. How many characters as memorable as Green Lantern, Flash, Thor, Spiderman, the Fantastic Four, Captain America, or Hulk were produced in the 90's and beyond? All the greatest, most recognizable characters came from the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Ages.

Okay, we'll at least now I've got you admitting you're only talking about a small percentage of books from those ages.

 

You're making an argument with the benefit of hindsight here. The only reason we know those characters are memorable was because enough time has passed to find out. You're neglecting the 100's, if not 1000's of characters created in those periods that didn't stand the test of time. For every Spider-Man, creators probably made a dozen heroes that have passed out of our memory, like the exploding Captain Marvel and the Red Bee. The only way we'll know if current characters stand the test of time is to actually allow time to pass.

 

The point is, the Golden Age and Silver Age had good points as well as low points. That's just like the Modern Age and current age of comics

A half-truth at best, and deceitful as well. Yes, both had high and low points, but you want to use that as an absolute balanced statement and it is not. Far more comics of far higher quality were produced in those earlier ages than any modern age (1990's, 2000's, etc). Modern comics have far fewer highs and far more lows. As a percentage, the earlie ages win hands down for quality.

Oh hogwash. There are your subjective tastes being spewed as facts again. You have no way to quantify "% of good comics" produced versus "% of bad comics." I personally can't sit down and read most DC Archive editions... the stories are too contrived, the art is too crude, and the characters are just boring. Most early Marvel stories don't fare much better. Reading about Iron Man fiddling with the transistors in his armor, or about Captain America using magnets in his gloves to guide his shield, is just stupid. The DC "Golden Age" miniseries, about the heroes of the Golden Age, was 100x better than anything ever actually written in the Golden Age. And let's not even try to compare any of the old artwork with that of somebody like Alan Davis. Please. It's just embarrassing. If I had to guess, I'd say less than 1% of the Golden Age books are actually readable as anything other than a history lesson or a curiosity, and maybe 15% to 20% of Silver Age books. For every great story in the Silver Age you can cite, you have some sort of goofiness of Batman playing space adventurer, or the Legion of Super Heroes doing their normal idiocy.

 

Not that I'm incapable of giving praise where it's due. The golden and silver age creators were good at exactly two things: 1) creativity, and 2) workmanship. As far as creativity, they created the sandboxes that all the modern creators are playing in... that's not to say that the modern creators don't add their own extensions. As far as workmanship, the old creators could certainly meet a deadline. That's fore sure. They might have produced shoddy, sloppy work at times to do it, but they were getting their book out on time.

[PeepsChicken]

Oh, wonderful. Revisionist history. Do you also believe the Holocaust didn't happen? Or that we never landed a man on the moon? A history denier? They haven't been "wiped clean". Modern comics just keep trying to reboot themselves and end up warping themselves more each time, further and further from the earlier quality. How many reboots have Marvel and DC had in the 90's alone? They can never stick with one thing for more than a year or so, because they have no clue about quality.

 

Did you just compare me to a Holocaust denier? I think you're dangerously close to Godwin'ing yourself.

 

The fact, and it is a fact regardless of how much you dislike it, is that my statement is 100% accurate. For continuity purposes, DC's silver and golden ages don't matter. They were literally wiped clean in Crisis. That's a fact, and your distaste doesn't change it.

 

Marvel, as far as I know, had no real reboots. DC had Zero Hour, which was an attempt to clean up some of the mess left over from Crisis in the 1980's.

 

Again, poor writing, writing that contradicts established facts as well as logic and common sense, do not matter. Do the views of the Flat Earth Society matter? No. They're looney and out of touch with reality because they refuse to acknowledge common sense, logic, and fact.

 

I underlined the parts of your statement that should show you're talking out of your rectum here. "Poor writing" is as subjective a standard as they come.

 

So, by your rationale, if writing is "poor," it can be disregarded for the sake of discussion? That pretty much lets anybody pick and choose what they think happened or didn't happen. That's the exact opposite of what a standard is.

 

As for "contradicts established facts," you mean "contradicts comic books," correct? That's what it boils down too. These aren't "established facts." They're all fictional stories. They only say what they say because one writer decided to say that, and another writer is just as likely to change that in the future. You can't latch onto a story written 1966 that says Aquaman's great uncle's name was Herbert and treat it like it's the unchangeable gospel. Well, you can, but as your tremors of rage drive the Cheeto dust off your chin, you're going to come across as Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons. If a later story seemingly contradicts something, try to reconcile it with the old "fact." If you can't, the old fact has been retconned. Deal with it and move on.

 

Wrong again. First, you say "even if you want to believe that there was some clearly developed intent at the time of the characters' creations" as if it isn't true. Try picking up a fanzine some time and learning something. Lee and Kirby created Galactus for a specific reason, and he was meant to be, essentially, God. Or God-like in stature. Yes, this comes from public writings and statements from the creators themselves. And yes, it does matter. And no, that does not mean the characters need to be static. John Byrne expanded the history and purpose of Galactus far beyond what was originally written, but he did so faithfully and sensibly, using common sense, logic, and faithfulness to the original design. Quality does not mean stagnation.

Somebody like Galactus may or may not be a special case. I don't know enough about him to say how deliberately he was planned (Let's not forget that he changed from his initial appearances... he originally showed up in a short sleeve shirt with a giant "G" on his chest. I guess they hadn't hammered him completely out yet.). But I do know, from interviews with Kirby and people who worked with him, that he would just churn out characters. Let's not pretend that all of Kirby's characters, much less all the other less prolific characters, had some "master design" for their creations. More often than not, they wanted somebody for Spider-Man or Batman to fight.

 

In any case, Lee and Kirby don't own Galactus. Marvel owns Galactus. So regardless of any original intent, Marvel editorial is the one who decides ultimately. Not Kirby. Not Byrne. Not the current writers.

 

And that has nothing to do with logic or common sense. Or did the basic functions and rules of logic and common sense change over that time as well?

 

You keep citing "logic and common sense." I'll give you hint: "logic" means a specific thing, and "common sense" pretty much means nothing, since it can be almost impossible to get two people to agree that something is "common sense." "Logic and common sense," as you're using it, is just a form of sneering shorthand to say "I can't quantify or present a rationale argument to support this fact, so I'm going to call it something and pretend it's self-evident."

 

Yeah, I got that. Cap still cannot stand up to Iron Man, at least not for long. The outcome is assured. Iron Man wins. He can fly, he is infinitely stronger than Cap, he is better protected and less vulnerable by far to damage, especially from a non-superpowered being. He has repulsor rays, he has all sorts of technological gadgets. The two are on far different tiers of power overall. Yes, a good writer can write a story where Cap rolls with the punches and avoids being killed, but ultimately Iron Man wins, and any writer who doesn't acknowledge that is a fool, because it defies canon, common sense, logic, etc.

 

There's your straw-man. You've just shifted your argument away from "Cap can't take a punch from Iron Man" to "Captain America can't beat Iron Man."

 

That wasn't the debate. Nobody was saying Captain America could last in a protracted fight with Iron Man. You asserted this (your words): "Well first of all, any writer who has Cap taking punches from Iron Man is insane. We can disregard any such story as being inaccurate, unfaithful, illogical, and just plain stupid. Cap cannot take punches from Iron Man and survive."

 

Note how you bandied out the "illogical" bit for that one too, even though you've since admitted that he might be able to do that with the rationale I presented. I presented you with images of Cap taking the punches, as well as rationales for how he could have survived, so you shift the argument. I've seen you do that time and time again. Just stop it.

 

That's because pre-1980 (actually, pre-1986 to be exact and accurate with what I've been saying) comics were simply of far higher quality. It's that simple. How many Stan Lees, Gerry Conways, Steve Engelharts, John Broomes, and other great writers do we have today? Yesteryear was loaded with them. Same for artists. How many modern artists have the stature (earned through professionalism, not moronic fanboy worship) of Kirby, Kane, Wrightson, Byrne, Perez, Ploog, Toth, Adams, Buscema, Everett, Starlin, Golden, Simonson, Kaluta, Brunner, or the dozens of high quality classic artists I can name?Few if any. And you keep asking (and I keep answering) that crap is crap, and 20 or 30 years of being crap does not magically turn crap into gold, it simply remains crap, albeit well aged crap.

 

Okay, so we're really not talking about how the characters were portrayed for a bulk of their appearances, but instead of which writers and artists were on them? Because I could have sworn you were talking about "Their continuity and portrayal for the bulk of their existence." That's another argument shift.

 

All those greats you listed were really good. I'll match them up any day against Simonson (I guess I get to use him too, thanks to his work on Thor and Orion), Mignola, Alan Davis, Garth Ennis, Steve Dillon, Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Kurt Busiek, Mark Waid, Warren Ellis, Neil Gaiman, Peter David, Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Keith Giffen, Steve McNiven, Frank Cho, John Romita Jr, and so on.

 

Oh wait. You don't like it, so it must be crap. Because of "logic." Or something.

 

Not condescending, just a statement of fact. Especially at Marvel, where they were very consistent (not 100%, but mainly and for the most part) in how they presented their characters. You rarely (if ever!) saw stupid crap like Spiderman beating Firelord. Galctus was not a cosmic punching bag for the uber-villain of the month.

And if it did happen, you can just clap your hands over your head and pretend it didn't exist, right?

 

I don't care what you think. I'm dealing with objective facts for the most part. Some is subjective, much is objective.

Science and the art field would be interested to know you've come up with an objective way to value art.

 

I think the early writing is overly naive and simplistic, personally, and lacking in how it dealt with both social issues and human behavior.

Really? So the social issues dealt with in Green Lantern by O'Neil and Adams is simplisitc and naive and lacking? The great stories in FF like Fantastic Four #51 "This Man, This Monster" was poorly done?

WRT Green Lantern: Wow, you cited an iconoclastic story that was actually well publicized for dealing with social issues, and you're citing that as an example of how things were? Hogwash. The vast majority of books DIDN'T address those issues. The Green Lantern issues did, which is why they're well remembered. Ironically, I believe you say below that's why you didn't like them, because you didn't like your comics dealing with serious issues? Wouldn't your preference for the golden and silver age stuff imply they DON'T deal with those issues, thereby reinforcing my point?

 

"This Man, This Monster" was a good and entertaining story, but it's hardly highbrow, and it's barely written above a juvenile level.

[PeepsChicken]

I don't expect others to "play by my rules". I hold things to a higher standard. Most people are content to consume crap. I am not. Funny how no one I've ever talked to has ever criticized vintage comics because the villain's name is Sinestro, or because the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants call themselves "evil".

Sure, because it's not childish to pick names that way. Right.

 

Let's see, I want a giant monster with bat wings to be my villain. Let's call him Ragewingzilla. Mmm, mmm. That's some good writing on my part. Good thing it's not "crap," since it's exactly the same sort of thought process that led to "Sinestro."

 

Or are you one of those hyper-realists who wants real world "grit" in their comics? I read comics for fun and for fantasy escapism. Real life has enough stress, horror, and negativity in it. I don't want to read about superheros dying of AIDS, or superheroes questioning their sexuality and wondering if they should engage in bestiality, or hear superhero women crying about co-dependent relationships with deranged, drunken husbands who kick them around, or hyper-realistic violence and smut like rape. That's crap, it's pathetic, it goes against the very reason for comics. And yes, I hated O'Neil's writing on GL in the 70's. I want my comics to entertain me, not preach to me the politics of the writers.

 

I didn't realize that the point of comics was to perpetuate adolescent male power fantasies while pretending real world issues don't exist. I guess I missed that section of the handbook.

 

It's facile writing to develop a story where Superjock punches Johnny Criminal in the face, which rehabilitates Johnny Criminal and brings justice to the world. It's much more interesting to me to read why Superjock decides that he needs to become a vigilante, what motivates Johnny Criminal, how precisely Superjock thinks he can make a difference outside of the law, what sort of trials he faces by his actions, and so on. But if you want to just read fantasy escapism, knock yourself out.

 

I suppose the simplest thing would be to direct you to a simpy Google or Wikipedia search for "suspension of disbelief", but I know you won't bother. Internal consistency, things like that. You clearly don't get it or simply don't want to get it.In fact, until you can show me that you understand the concept of suspension of disbelief and how it applies to comics, I won't bother to engage you on this one, because it would be akin to talking to a wall. First show me you understand the concept, then we can debate it. Because you clearly don't.

 

Way to miss the point.

 

I could give you a text book definition on suspension of disbelief, complete with an essay on its application to science fiction and fantasy works, but it wouldn't make a difference, since you'd respond with your normal twaddle about "logic and common sense, common sense and logic."

 

You're taking modern books and nitpicking them ("*chortle chortle*, those poor fools don't know Captain America can't take a punch from Iron Man!" "How can Iron Man's armor know Captain America's moves! ZOMG, bad writing!"). You're the one who is selectively choosing to abandon your suspension of disbelief when it suits your interests or your arguments, while keeping your suspension maintained for everything else. As I stated, this is a medium where fantastic, improbable, and often impossible things happen. It's physically impossible for the Flash to run as fast as he does. It's physically impossible for Pym to grow as much as he can without his bones snapping from the weight. We let all these things go willingly to keep the story going, but when it suits you, you act as if it's suddenly impossible to believe Captain America has really good reflexes and a massive amount of combat training that just might keep him alive against Iron Man, or you ignore the fact that Tony Stark fought with Captain America for YEARS, and moreover was director (and the creator) of SHIELD and had access to countless amounts of footage, AND knew he was going up against Cap, so is it REALLY that hard to believe he programmed Cap's moves into the armor? Really?

 

If you want to strictly adhere to logic and science, NONE of the superhero comics work. Period. Superheroes that didn't get killed in the line of duty would have an effective life span of one years or less due to the damage on their bodies. Tank shells can punch a hole through other tanks, but Iron Man's <1" thick armor stops the rounds? Superman can lift up a 100 ton ship with his bare hands? Hogwash, all the pressure of the ship is concentrated in the area of his two hands. He'd punch right through the ship and go out the top. Cyclops' neck would have snapped from the equal and opposite force the first time he fired his eye blasts.

 

You have to have a massive suspension of disbelief for ANY of this to work. Which is fine. Just be consistent. If you're willing to suspend disbelief about 99% of the stuff, stop quibbling and exhorting the other 1% as "bad writing."

[ninja katt]

@popcorn@ tee hee... I love vs. threads.

[jonesy7475]

If anyone is interested I know how Batman could beat Galactus.......

[Superpowers1980]

I could read Captain Marvel post all day

 

Whoever said vs threads suck....HA!!

[BigBot84]

You're wanting to see Xorr vs. CaptainMarvel though when the whole point of the thread was Cap vs. Bats.

[Bjjer]

Im swinging on DC and Batman's nutsack and I say Cap wins in a no weapon dueling scenario. Cap is a genetically altered human;Batman is a regular human who has trained himself to the peak of his own human abilities but he is still just a man. Throw in variables such as weapons, enviroment, preparedness and using any and all means to win(including cheating) Ill bet my farm on Batman.

[Belmont13]

Why such a fight over the Iron Man/Cap battle???? I don't get it. It's so simple. First, Can Cap take the punches Iron Man is throwing in that battle? yes. Can Cap survive the full force of an Iron Man punch straight to the head? Highly unlikely but what makes everyone think that Iron Man was using the full force of his punch. If any of you have read the Civil War storyline you know that Tony was looking for non lethal ways to take down the unregistered heroes, especially Captain America. That's why he used the brain scrambler so it wouldn't come to a fight to the death.

 

 

yet, he throws cap through a super thick concrete/steel wall. that whole page clearly shows that cap is able to take 10x the abuse that bats can take. full force or not, whatever punches he threw at cap, bats couldnt take.

yet people claim Batman can K.O. Captain America.

[Superpowers1980]

Why such a fight over the Iron Man/Cap battle???? I don't get it. It's so simple. First, Can Cap take the punches Iron Man is throwing in that battle? yes. Can Cap survive the full force of an Iron Man punch straight to the head? Highly unlikely but what makes everyone think that Iron Man was using the full force of his punch. If any of you have read the Civil War storyline you know that Tony was looking for non lethal ways to take down the unregistered heroes, especially Captain America. That's why he used the brain scrambler so it wouldn't come to a fight to the death.

 

 

yet, he throws cap through a super thick concrete/steel wall. that whole page clearly shows that cap is able to take 10x the abuse that bats can take. full force or not, whatever punches he threw at cap, bats couldnt take.

yet people claim Batman can K.O. Captain America.

Batman may not be able to K.O a drug filled Captain America but he could/would still win. The only chance Captain America has is a fight without weapons, sort of like they are in a ring together.

[Xorr]

BigBot84 wrote:

 

You're wanting to see Xorr vs. CaptainMarvel though when the whole point of the thread was Cap vs. Bats.

 

It's no contest. Xorr is a cosmic being above Galactus's power level, so he can squash Capt. Marvel like a bug. And no, Batman can't beat hm either!

[Xorr]

Captain Marvel wrote:

 

No, you have to keep repeating it because certain people have the audacity to keep disagreeing with the quackery you're labeling "common sense." You're taking your own subjective tastes, using the factors that led you to develop those tastes, and treating your conclusions like they're some sort of objective outcome. They aren't.

 

To say that a non-super-powered mortal can beat a cosmic-powered god-like being who is infinitely most intelligent, infinitely more powerful, and infinitely more invulnerable goes against common sense, and I don't care who disagrees. The notion that Batman can single-handedly beat Galactus (or Odin, Dormammu, etc) is not even merely a lack of common sense, it is a sign of mental illness, ie insanity. That is no different than a Christian saying that I can beat up on Almighty God. It's an insane statement.

 

So yes, they are objective statements. And the only "quackery" is coming from those who harbor the delusion that a single non-powered mortal can defeat a god. If that were the case, the threat of Galactus would have long ago ceased to exist. He at the Skrull homeworld and all their power was not able to even make him blink an eye. But Batman is gonna do what? Beat him up with his batarang? Try using even a minimal level of common sense here.

 

No, but you're the one trying to put the stories up on a pedestal in order to discount the modern stuff.

 

Wrong again. I am merely pointing to a time when comics stood by their own rules, when comics were faithful to the design of their characters and did not abuse them, when comics used common sense and good taste, and when comics portrayed their characters in a manner fitting their powers and design. It's not my fault modern comics are so poorly done.

 

You're citing really good runs on books, but those runs are the outliers. Yes, more than likely, the "award winning" runs are good runs. That's almost a tautological argument. We're not talking about just the cream of the crop, but the bulk of the work put out there in the silver and golden ages. A great, great amount of it is crap. It's sometimes charming crap, but it's crap nonetheless.

 

I and others have repeatedly pointed this out to you but you refuse to hear what's being said. Nobody ever said that every issue was great back then. What is being said is that comics in those earlier ages were, ON AVERAGE, better than comics today. That comics in those earlier ages had, ON AVERAGE, a better ratio of good to bad stories and art. In other words, if you randomly picked 10 comics form the Silver and Bronze Ages, you might get 5, 6, 7, maybe even 8 issues with great stories and art. Or at least really good material. With modern comics, you might get 1 or 2 at best (and uin my eyes, probably far less than that).

 

You really, really need to learn what a strawman is before you accuse somebody else of making one. It's ironic that you accuse me of making a strawman, and two sentences later try to re-craft the argument in a fashion you can win. Of course nobody can compare to his volume of work or his admiration by everybody. I never said otherwise.

 

Transparent attempt at evasion on your part noted.

 

My thesis has been that categorically disregarding anything from some arbitrary point mid-80's onward as "low quality" is foolish; there's ample good work amongst the bad in recent comics.

 

And that is a strawman argument. Nobody is categorically disregarding anything from any "arbitrary point". There is no arbitrary point. There is a point, around 1986, when quality finally petered out and comics went downhill. Low sales of comics since that point tend to agree. Their heyday is over since then. And there is very little if any good work in modern times. And for any there is, there is a hugely disproportionate amount of crap, especially compared to other ages. In earlier ages, even the lesser stuff was readable for the most part, and entertaining. Today, most of the crap is totally unreadable, and sloppy, poor, lazy work.

 

Likewise, there was ample low quality work from before that period, and even "The King" wasn't immune to it. The work of Kirby and Lee and so on was largely a product of their time, and it could never be recreated. Lee, for example, has floundered in the past 20 or 30 years. How many failed creations, books, and offerings has he had?

 

Ummm...newsflash. Stan Lee has been a mere figurehead for Marvel for what? Thirty years now?

 

Okay, we'll at least now I've got you admitting you're only talking about a small percentage of books from those ages.

 

No you have me admitting no such thing. With Marvel especially, the majority of the work back then was good, great, or spectacular. With DC, well...DC has always had a quality issue. With Marvel you usually had good writers and good artists together, and sometimes a good writer with a so-so artist or vice versa. Rarely, a bad writer/bad artist combo. With DC it was often a bad writer and a bad artist (every issue of JLA until Dillin came along), usually a bad writer with a good artist or vice versa, and sometimes a great writer with a great artist. But even DC's crappier early stuff is usually better than most everything out there today. I'll even take the crappy DC stuff over 52, Civil War, Marvel Zombies, and most anything I've seen.

[Xorr]

You're making an argument with the benefit of hindsight here. The only reason we know those characters are memorable was because enough time has passed to find out.

 

Spiderman, Batman, Superman, the FF, Hulk, Thor, Capt. America were icons within less than 20 years of their creation. Spiderman was created in 1962. Ten years later in 1972, he was more recognized world-wide than even Superman. I remember the article appearing in the Chicago Sun-Times back in '72 talking about this. And while you might argue that Superman was more well known, Superman had a 23 year head start on Spiderman! And still Spiderman rivaled or surpassed him in recognition. He was famous world-wide. So what took DC decades to achieve, Marvel achieved in 10 short years. By the early/mid 70's, a mere 10 years after introducing them, Spiderman, Hulk, Thor, Capt. America (ok, he had a head start), and the FF were as popular and iconic as Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, etc. So no, it does not take that long to establish success.

 

So name for me all those characters created in the mid-late 80s, 90's, and into 2000's who are anywhere near as well known after 10, 20, or 25 years who are as well known all over the world (or even just to the general non-comic reading masses in America). I can't think of a single one, off hand.

 

You're neglecting the 100's, if not 1000's of characters created in those periods that didn't stand the test of time. For every Spider-Man, creators probably made a dozen heroes that have passed out of our memory, like the exploding Captain Marvel and the Red Bee. The only way we'll know if current characters stand the test of time is to actually allow time to pass.

 

They never pass out of memory. I love those forgotten characters. So much so, that I started a website for them! Good opportunity to interject that. For those who love forgotten characters, enjoy!

 

Forgotten Characters HQ

 

Oh hogwash. There are your subjective tastes being spewed as facts again. You have no way to quantify "% of good comics" produced versus "% of bad comics."

 

Oh yes, we can. We need only look at the long runs of great writers and artists on so many titles, the sheer creative output, the world-wide popularity of those characters, and the number of awards won, along with the credentials and talent of the creators of comics back then. Only a non-informed comics fan could possibly claim that today's comics offer better material (or even equally good material) than the earlier ages of comics. It's simply not true.

 

I personally can't sit down and read most DC Archive editions... the stories are too contrived, the art is too crude, and the characters are just boring. Most early Marvel stories don't fare much better.

 

Agree about DC, not about Marvel. And you also have to consider Atlas, Harvey, Charlton, Dell, Gold Key, EC, and all the other companies back then producing good comics. Far more high quality to choose from than any other time.

 

Reading about Iron Man fiddling with the transistors in his armor, or about Captain America using magnets in his gloves to guide his shield, is just stupid.

 

Not nearly as stupid as reading about Batman being "able to defeat anyone given enough time to plan it", or Marvel characters turning into zombies and eating one another, or modern day politics being pushed through comics by their moron writers.

 

And let's not even try to compare any of the old artwork with that of somebody like Alan Davis.

 

Agreed that Alan Davis is better than most Golden Age artists. I never claimed the Golden Age was great as far as art or writing. But he would be an average to somewhat above average artist in the Silver or Bronze Ages, not one of the better ones.

 

Please. It's just embarrassing.

 

If you want to stop being embarrassed, stop claiming that modern comics are so great.

 

If I had to guess, I'd say less than 1% of the Golden Age books are actually readable as anything other than a history lesson or a curiosity, and maybe 15% to 20% of Silver Age books. For every great story in the Silver Age you can cite, you have some sort of goofiness of Batman playing space adventurer, or the Legion of Super Heroes doing their normal idiocy.

 

You sound like someone who grew up on modern comics, not the classics.

 

Not that I'm incapable of giving praise where it's due. The golden and silver age creators were good at exactly two things: 1) creativity, and 2) workmanship. As far as creativity, they created the sandboxes that all the modern creators are playing in... that's not to say that the modern creators don't add their own extensions. As far as workmanship, the old creators could certainly meet a deadline. That's fore sure. They might have produced shoddy, sloppy work at times to do it, but they were getting their book out on time.

 

Again, enlighten us as to precisely which artists/writers/comic companies have, in the last 25 years, created such memorable characters as Spiderman or the Hulk, keeping in mind that Spiderman was at least as popular as Superman (who enjoyed a quarter century head start) within a mere 10 years of his creation, as were the Hulk and others. Show us a single decade-long run of almost exclusively high-quality writing and art, comparable to the Lee/Kirby runs on Thor and FF or Lee/Ditko/Romita on Spiderman, in the last 25 years. Hell, show me any comic in the last 25 years that sold 1,000,000 copies or more a month. The population of the USA has literally doubled since comics were selling a million copies (or more!) a month, and yet sales today are down to less than a a fraction of that. The Top 300 selling comics in Jan of 2009 were nothing in comparison. One title at 300,000, three at 100,000 and the rest in far lower numbers. Only the top 22 sold more than 50,000 issues, with only 4 of them above 100,000. Half of those top 300 sold less than 10,000 copies, or 1/100th as much as comics in my day. Pathetic.

[Xorr]

CaptainMarvel wrote:

 

Did you just compare me to a Holocaust denier? I think you're dangerously close to Godwin'ing yourself.

 

My point is that you deny history. DC and Marvel have tried "wiping clean" their history, but that does not mean it doesn't exist. And they screw it up by trying to wipe part of it clean while they deny the rest. It's pure ego, matched with equal amounts of stupidity. No one in comics these days has anywhere near the talent of the Silver and Bronze Age writers and artists, and yet these modern hacks think they can re-invent the wheel. They cannot. They simply made a mess of it. DC continuity is far more convoluted now than it ever was before they "fixed it" with the stupid Crisis on Infinite Earths.

 

I underlined the parts of your statement that should show you're talking out of your rectum here. "Poor writing" is as subjective a standard as they come.

 

It's s shame that you don't understand that there are certain aspects to writing, the adherence to which is universally acknowledged as good writing, and the ignoring of which is considered poor writing. How can you not know this? Did you ever even go to school? I don't even think it's worth my time to go into detail on this with you, because you simply don't seem to know anything about it. Google writing standards or something, or take a class in creative writing or literature.

 

As for "contradicts established facts," you mean "contradicts comic books," correct? That's what it boils down too. These aren't "established facts." They're all fictional stories.

 

Facts as established in the comics themselves. Canon is canon. Again we come back to internal consistency and suspension of disbelief.

 

They only say what they say because one writer decided to say that, and another writer is just as likely to change that in the future. You can't latch onto a story written 1966 that says Aquaman's great uncle's name was Herbert and treat it like it's the unchangeable gospel. Well, you can, but as your tremors of rage drive the Cheeto dust off your chin, you're going to come across as Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons. If a later story seemingly contradicts something, try to reconcile it with the old "fact." If you can't, the old fact has been retconned. Deal with it and move on.

 

"Deal with it and move on". The standard battle cry of those who slobber over the crumbs of crap being handed down to them instead of demanding better. No, I think not. I prefer to demand quality over settling for crap. I accept retcons if, and only if, they are well done and preserve common sense, logic, and consistency. In other words, I can handle a retcon of a dead character not really being dead if they do the story well and it makes sense, but I cannot accept a retcon that illogically and insanely shows a mere mortal beating a god-like being or something along those lines, because that is simply poor writing.

 

Somebody like Galactus may or may not be a special case. I don't know enough about him to say how deliberately he was planned (Let's not forget that he changed from his initial appearances... he originally showed up in a short sleeve shirt with a giant "G" on his chest. I guess they hadn't hammered him completely out yet.).

 

Well there goes any believability or authority you had, and that can pretty much conclude this debate. You're talking out your backside about something you admittedly have no knowledge of, and telling someone who has much greater knowledge on the subject that he's wrong. You lose.

 

But I do know, from interviews with Kirby and people who worked with him, that he would just churn out characters. Let's not pretend that all of Kirby's characters, much less all the other less prolific characters, had some "master design" for their creations. More often than not, they wanted somebody for Spider-Man or Batman to fight.

 

And often, as was the case with Galactus, they created him for a specific purpose and with a specific intention of how the character was to be used (same for Odin, the Watcher, Eternity, etc).

 

In any case, Lee and Kirby don't own Galactus. Marvel owns Galactus. So regardless of any original intent, Marvel editorial is the one who decides ultimately. Not Kirby. Not Byrne. Not the current writers.

 

Ownership does not by default imply wisdom or quality. You're clearly one of the drone consumers who simply accepts whatever crap is thrown out there because it's "official" and because Marvel as a "right" to destroy its own characters. That's slave mentality, not for me. Abusing the property they own the rights to does not magically make it a good thing.

 

You keep citing "logic and common sense." I'll give you hint: "logic" means a specific thing, and "common sense" pretty much means nothing, since it can be almost impossible to get two people to agree that something is "common sense." "Logic and common sense," as you're using it, is just a form of sneering shorthand to say "I can't quantify or present a rationale argument to support this fact, so I'm going to call it something and pretend it's self-evident."

 

Common sense is (or used to be) in many ways universal. You don't touch a hot stove or you get burned. Common sense. You don't walk down the express way...you get hit by cars. Common sense. You don't pump gasoline while smoking a cigarette. Common sense. So yes, we can apply logic and common sense to comic issues. Galactus is a nearly infinitely powerful, god-like being who can do damn near anything...he eats planets, he controls cosmic power, he can resurrect the dead, transmute matter and energy on any level, he can control time, etc. Batman is a non-powered mortal, just like the rest of us. It defies both logic and common sense to claim Batman can beat Galactus, and any such claim is insanity. Period. You cannot make it logical or apply common sense to make it work.

[Xorr]

There's your straw-man. You've just shifted your argument away from "Cap can't take a punch from Iron Man" to "Captain America can't beat Iron Man."

 

Cap cannot take a full powered punch (or even a half-powered punch) from Iron Man. End of story.

 

That wasn't the debate. Nobody was saying Captain America could last in a protracted fight with Iron Man. You asserted this (your words): "Well first of all, any writer who has Cap taking punches from Iron Man is insane. We can disregard any such story as being inaccurate, unfaithful, illogical, and just plain stupid. Cap cannot take punches from Iron Man and survive."

 

Correct, because the author of that post presented his argument as Iron Man punching away at Cap, with no qualifiers. Was Iron Man holding back? Was his armor almost out of power? Again, logic and common sense. Cap cannot survive punches from Iron Man. Yes, you can write it as Cap ducking and rolling with it or Iron Man holding back, but when it comes to all-out combat, where one has to win, Iron Man kills Cap. Cap cannot "take punches" from such a powerful being. Rolling with them or ducking is not "taking punches". Taking a punch implies getting hit full on and surviving it. You're just playing at semantics here, we all know what was being discussed.

 

Note how you bandied out the "illogical" bit for that one too, even though you've since admitted that he might be able to do that with the rationale I presented. I presented you with images of Cap taking the punches, as well as rationales for how he could have survived, so you shift the argument. I've seen you do that time and time again. Just stop it.

 

Not shifting arguments at all. The author of that original post (of which I cannot be bothered to look up - was it Pooda I believe?) stated that Cap was being punched round by Iron Man and that he got thrown through a brick wall and all that. If all Iron Man was trying to do was capture Cap, sure, that's common sense too...he would not be throwing full powered punches. The premise presented to me was simply that Cap was standing toe to toe with Iron Man and taking punches, which is absurd. Given more information, we can clarify the matter, but my premise still stands, ie Cap cannot take punches from Iron Man and survive.

 

Okay, so we're really not talking about how the characters were portrayed for a bulk of their appearances, but instead of which writers and artists were on them? Because I could have sworn you were talking about "Their continuity and portrayal for the bulk of their existence." That's another argument shift.

 

Not sure how you came around to warping that argument, but you're wrong once again. I am indeed talking about how they were portrayed for the bulk of their existence, especially before comics went to hell as far as quality, continuity, internal consistency, logic, common sense, and tradition.

 

All those greats you listed were really good. I'll match them up any day against Simonson (I guess I get to use him too, thanks to his work on Thor and Orion), Mignola, Alan Davis, Garth Ennis, Steve Dillon, Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Kurt Busiek, Mark Waid, Warren Ellis, Neil Gaiman, Peter David, Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Keith Giffen, Steve McNiven, Frank Cho, John Romita Jr, and so on.

 

"Really good"? They are amongst the greatest comic artists and writers of all time! None you mention hold a candle to the ones I mentioned.

 

Science and the art field would be interested to know you've come up with an objective way to value art.

 

Stuff like anatomy, storytelling ability, proportion, perspective, etc. for openers. Again, try taking an art course or something so that you can have a clue what you're talking about. Just because you are ignorant of something does not mean it doesn't exist.

 

WRT Green Lantern: Wow, you cited an iconoclastic story that was actually well publicized for dealing with social issues, and you're citing that as an example of how things were? Hogwash. The vast majority of books DIDN'T address those issues. The Green Lantern issues did, which is why they're well remembered. Ironically, I believe you say below that's why you didn't like them, because you didn't like your comics dealing with serious issues? Wouldn't your preference for the golden and silver age stuff imply they DON'T deal with those issues, thereby reinforcing my point?

 

The point, which flew above your head like the space shuttle, is that comics back then were indeed more complex than you give them credit for. You're confusing complexity of writing with social relevance or, more accurately, political commentary. The modern Civil War crap from Marvel is political commentary. GL in the 70's was social relevance mixed with political commentary (with a heavy emphasis on the latter). I can appreciate some social relevance in comics, but not political commentary or preaching, which is what GL by O'Neil/Adams was and why I did not like it. Comics are about escapist fantasy. Complex stories have always been around. The Silver Age was all about making comic stories more complex than the Golden Age comics. Comics "matured" in the Silver and Bronze Ages. Stories were far more complex. The aforementioned GL stories, most of the Lee/Kirby Thor stories, most of the Lee/Kirby FF stuff, etc...so many comics back then had detailed, complex plots. Look at the classic Ultron plot in Avengers #160-171 or the plot of Avengers #172-177 with Michael the Enemy. Or any of the Dr. Strange issues of the Silver Age.

 

Hyper-realism and political commentary is no substitute for fun, complex, entertaining stories as we had in the Silver and Bronze Ages.

 

"This Man, This Monster" was a good and entertaining story, but it's hardly highbrow, and it's barely written above a juvenile level.

 

You call a universally recognized classic "juvenile". You're just a typical adult reader who cannot appreciate, understand or remember what it was like to be a kid. You're the kind who thumbs his nose down at classic comics because they're "beneath me", and who praises haughty, badly written crap simply because it has an adult theme. But since you've admitted that you don't know squat about Galactus (and yet feel qualified to comment on him), and have admitted that you know nothing about objective standards of writing (and yet still feel compelled to offer an ignorant opinion on it), there is no point to further discussion between us, now is there? You've prove you don't know what you're talking about.

 

But worry not, I'll shoot down your last post as well, just to be thorough.

[Rockzilla]

[Xorr]

I'll skip over all your prattling about how "juvenile" comics are, and how disturbed you are by names such as the "Brotherhood of Evil Mutants", simply because it would take more time to explain the logic of that to you than it's worth, especially because you wouldn't understand it anyway.

 

I could give you a text book definition on suspension of disbelief, complete with an essay on its application to science fiction and fantasy works, but it wouldn't make a difference, since you'd respond with your normal twaddle about "logic and common sense, common sense and logic."

 

For someone who claims to be able to give a textbook definition, you've certainly displayed a lack of understanding of the term. What an oxymoron. "I know it but I don't know it".

 

You're taking modern books and nitpicking them ("*chortle chortle*, those poor fools don't know Captain America can't take a punch from Iron Man!" "How can Iron Man's armor know Captain America's moves! ZOMG, bad writing!"). You're the one who is selectively choosing to abandon your suspension of disbelief when it suits your interests or your arguments, while keeping your suspension maintained for everything else.

 

You see it that way only because you don't understand logic, common sense (you don't even admit this exists!), suspension of disbelief, or internal consistency. But I'm done trying to explain colors to the blind.

 

As I stated, this is a medium where fantastic, improbable, and often impossible things happen. It's physically impossible for the Flash to run as fast as he does. It's physically impossible for Pym to grow as much as he can without his bones snapping from the weight.

 

Which is where suspension of disbelief and internal consistency come in. We agree to believe that Flash can physically run as fast as he can. This isn't science fiction, it's fantasy. So we accept that. However, it must consistently make sense, it must have internal logic. It ruins suspension of disbelief if today Flash can run at the speed of light, tomorrow only at the speed of sound, and later only as fast as a race car, then at some point later back to the speed of light. You clearly don't understand the concept, as evidenced by your confusion over this.

 

Now, with this next section, sit down and take notes, because Xorr is schooling you and there's gonna be a test at the end. So pay attention.

 

We let all these things go willingly to keep the story going, but when it suits you, you act as if it's suddenly impossible to believe Captain America has really good reflexes and a massive amount of combat training that just might keep him alive against Iron Man,

 

You clearly don't have a clue what you're talking about. I said that Cap cannot "take punches" from Iron Man and live, not that he could not duck or otherwise evade them or roll with them, or that Iron Man could not hold back (thus allowing Cap to survive), or that the two could not engage in combat (although Iron Man would clearly win eventually). You consistently do this...you evade, obfuscate, and misinterpret. Cap cannot "take punches" from Iron Man. "Taking punches" implies getting hit head-on, full force. And in that case, Cap is dead on the first punch. End of story. Only a fool would argue otherwise. However, Cap surviving a fight with Iron Man can be explained without destroying suspension of disbelief because we can turn to logical, sane, common sense explanations that do not require a series of unbelievable assumptions. In other words, we can logically and with common sense, especially based on knowing the characters and their powers and attitudes, believe that Cap is trained highly enough to roll with and avoid the full force of the blows, or that Iron Man is holding back most of his power on those punches. Cap surviving a fight with Iron Man can be explained without resorting to impossible, illogical, absurd assumptions that do not fit with continuity or canon. Cap surviving "taking punches from Iron Man" (ie getting beaten about full power) is absurd.

 

or you ignore the fact that Tony Stark fought with Captain America for YEARS, and moreover was director (and the creator) of SHIELD and had access to countless amounts of footage, AND knew he was going up against Cap, so is it REALLY that hard to believe he programmed Cap's moves into the armor? Really?

 

The very idea is stupid in so many ways, I have no idea where to start. First of all, the idea that Iron Man's armor has "recorded every punch [Cap] has ever thrown" is idiotic in the extreme. Your claim that Stark's involvement with SHIELD grants him access to "countless amounts of footage" is even more absurd. In order to accept this idiotic crap without destroying suspension of disbelief, we must posit the existence of many illogical, impossible, contradictory assumptions.

 

First, you ask us to believe that SHIELD has somehow magically managed to record on film every moment of Cap's life, so that they have on tape "every punch he's ever thrown". They would have to have taped every moment of his life because how else would they know when he's going to throw a punch or get into combat? Now I ask, how did SHIELD manage to do that during the Avengers/Defenders War, when Cap was in the Dark Dimension fighting alongside the Defenders against Loki and Dormammu? SHIELD was not there. How did SHIELD manage to videotape all the punches thrown by Cap on Other-Earth or Earth-S (whatever they call it these days) during the Serpent Crown affair in Avengers #141-147? SHIELD was not there. I didn't see SHIELD present when Cap fought alongside the Avengers against Michael the Enemy in Avengers #176/177. SHIELD was not present inside the various underground areas, back alleys, warehouses, and other locations where Cap has fought enemies. What do they have, a tracking device surgically implanted in one of Cap's eyes? So your claim about SHIELD taping all of Cap's fights is absurd and ridiculous on that level alone, and on that level alone destroys suspension of disbelief via egregious offenses against logic, common sense, and historical precedence in comic stories.

 

Second, we have to believe that someone took the time to sit down and fast-forward through 30+ years of tape in order to extract only the punches and combat scenes from Cap's life, so that the program could examine his moves. That alone would take decades.

 

Third, you ask us to believe that Iron Man was able to create a program that could parse through all the hundreds of thousands of punches thrown by Cap in a lifetime, and then actually be accurate enough to predict (with unerring accuracy) every one of an infinite number of possible combat combinations that Cap might use, and that it could compute that infinite number of possible combinations fast enough to beat Cap's nearly super-human reflexes.

 

Fourth, you ask us to believe that Iron Man specifically did so for Cap alone, which makes no sense because Cap is an ally, not an enemy. Yeah, I assume it's part of that idiotic Civil War story, but in any case that brings us up to another issue, namely...

 

Fifth, the idea that Iron Man can do program his armor in that way effectively renders him unbeatable by anyone since he can predict every move his opponent is going to make even before they make it, regardless of who the opponent is. And if he did that for Cap, why isn't he now programming his armor to do the same against every other foe he's ever faced? Or do you ask us to believe that SHIELD only video taped ever punch Cap has ever thrown, and not anyone else's?

 

Five impossible things before breakfast, CaptainMarvel?

 

The entire concept was bred in some stupid drooling fanboy writer's imagination, who undoubtedly thought it was "kewl" when in all reality it was an idiotic idea that destroys all suspension of disbelief by asking us to assume multiple levels of both improbability and impossibility. It asks us to assume things that go against established precedence, against the very stories preceding it, against logic and common sense (which exist whether you choose to believe in them or not) and against any sane measure of storytelling.

 

If you want to strictly adhere to logic and science, NONE of the superhero comics work

 

Strawman. I never said I wanted to strictly adhere to science. That's something only you heard in your own head. I never said it. And again, you have a non-existent understanding of suspension of disbelief and internal consistency, so discussing this with you is like discussing philosophy with a kid off the short bus. It's pointless.

 

Superheroes that didn't get killed in the line of duty would have an effective life span of one years or less due to the damage on their bodies. Tank shells can punch a hole through other tanks, but Iron Man's <1" thick armor stops the rounds? Superman can lift up a 100 ton ship with his bare hands? Hogwash, all the pressure of the ship is concentrated in the area of his two hands. He'd punch right through the ship and go out the top. Cyclops' neck would have snapped from the equal and opposite force the first time he fired his eye blasts.

 

Internal consistency. Covered. Move on.

 

You have to have a massive suspension of disbelief for ANY of this to work. Which is fine. Just be consistent. If you're willing to suspend disbelief about 99% of the stuff, stop quibbling and exhorting the other 1% as "bad writing."

 

And consistency is what I have consistently been talking about. Duh! Again, you don't get it and there's no way I can force you to get it since you simply don't want to get it.

[jahue]

Cap wins in hand to hand easily, but throw in weapons and Cap still wins. While Bats has batarangs and smoke bombs. Cap has a shield, Thompson Sub machine gun, Colt 45, and an M1 Garand that he was trained with in WWII and he used those weapons during the war. So I'm taking Caps weapons, superior agility, strength, stamina, speed, and his ability to use lethal force against a batarang

[PeepsChicken]

To say that a non-super-powered mortal can beat a cosmic-powered god-like being who is infinitely most intelligent, infinitely more powerful, and infinitely more invulnerable goes against common sense, and I don't care who disagrees. The notion that Batman can single-handedly beat Galactus (or Odin, Dormammu, etc) is not even merely a lack of common sense, it is a sign of mental illness, ie insanity. That is no different than a Christian saying that I can beat up on Almighty God. It's an insane statement.

 

So yes, they are objective statements. And the only "quackery" is coming from those who harbor the delusion that a single non-powered mortal can defeat a god. If that were the case, the threat of Galactus would have long ago ceased to exist. He at the Skrull homeworld and all their power was not able to even make him blink an eye. But Batman is gonna do what? Beat him up with his batarang? Try using even a minimal level of common sense here.

 

Who the hell are you arguing with here? You keep going back to this Batman vs. Galactus scenario that only exists in your mind. Again, it's unbelievable that somebody would accuse me of crafting a straw-man, when you KEEP repeating a perfect example of it. We're talking about Debate A, and you shift the argument to Debate B and attempt to thrash it down.

 

Get back on topic, stop dragging out this Batman vs. Galactus nonsense, or go start a new thread.

 

Wrong again. I am merely pointing to a time when comics stood by their own rules, when comics were faithful to the design of their characters and did not abuse them, when comics used common sense and good taste, and when comics portrayed their characters in a manner fitting their powers and design. It's not my fault modern comics are so poorly done.

 

Nope, I had it right the first time. You're stuck with your favorite era in your mind as the best, and you're unable to let it go. I see it all the time. People who came of age in the 1980's often think that music is the best. People in the 1990's think theirs is, and so on. You have a perception bias you can't let go of, and you're trying to use all the ostensibly objective rationales that really amount to nothing more than restatements of your subjective preference. It's sad, really.

 

I and others have repeatedly pointed this out to you but you refuse to hear what's being said. Nobody ever said that every issue was great back then. What is being said is that comics in those earlier ages were, ON AVERAGE, better than comics today. That comics in those earlier ages had, ON AVERAGE, a better ratio of good to bad stories and art. In other words, if you randomly picked 10 comics form the Silver and Bronze Ages, you might get 5, 6, 7, maybe even 8 issues with great stories and art. Or at least really good material. With modern comics, you might get 1 or 2 at best (and uin my eyes, probably far less than that).

 

Oh, I "hear" what's being "said." I don't agree with it. I think those numbers are hilariously skewed. If you randomly picked 10 comics from the silver and bronze ages, you'd get maybe 3 that were decent. With modern comics, you'd get maybe 4 or 5.

 

Transparent attempt at evasion on your part noted.

 

Great, a non-response. At least you didn't try to segue back to Batman vs. Galactus that time.

 

My thesis has been that categorically disregarding anything from some arbitrary point mid-80's onward as "low quality" is foolish; there's ample good work amongst the bad in recent comics.

 

And that is a strawman argument. Nobody is categorically disregarding anything from any "arbitrary point". There is no arbitrary point. There is a point, around 1986, when quality finally petered out and comics went downhill. Low sales of comics since that point tend to agree. Their heyday is over since then. And there is very little if any good work in modern times. And for any there is, there is a hugely disproportionate amount of crap, especially compared to other ages. In earlier ages, even the lesser stuff was readable for the most part, and entertaining. Today, most of the crap is totally unreadable, and sloppy, poor, lazy work.

 

Okay, two points:

1) I'm convinced you know NOTHING about what "straw-man" means after reading that paragraph. Perhaps you can explain how you took my statement to be a straw-man? Perhaps an intro course on logic would be in order?

 

2) You very much picked an arbitrary date, as far as I can tell. What factors, other than your subjective tastes, make you choose that date? And let's not use sales numbers to indicate quality. Sales spiked post 1986, by the way, not dipping again until the mid-to-late 1990's. I guess that period between 1986 and 1995 was really high quality, if we're going by sales. X-Men #1, which came out in the early 1990's, sold 8 million copies. That means that a single issue of X-Men sold more copies than any entire year of Amazing Spider-Man total, pre-1986. X-Force #1 sold 5 million. Both X-Men and X-Force were complete crap in my eyes, but they both put the lie to the notion that sales reflect quality.

 

Ummm...newsflash. Stan Lee has been a mere figurehead for Marvel for what? Thirty years now?

 

Umm, newsflash back at you: Stan Lee has been involved in a massive amount of total crap over the years. As a figurehead, he's great. When he tries to come up with stuff on his own, he sucks.

 

No you have me admitting no such thing. With Marvel especially, the majority of the work back then was good, great, or spectacular. With DC, well...DC has always had a quality issue. With Marvel you usually had good writers and good artists together, and sometimes a good writer with a so-so artist or vice versa. Rarely, a bad writer/bad artist combo. With DC it was often a bad writer and a bad artist (every issue of JLA until Dillin came along), usually a bad writer with a good artist or vice versa, and sometimes a great writer with a great artist. But even DC's crappier early stuff is usually better than most everything out there today. I'll even take the crappy DC stuff over 52, Civil War, Marvel Zombies, and most anything I've seen.

 

Okay, so you've conceded DC had poor quality, so we're really just discussing Marvel. Here's the problem. You're stating all this as fact, and it's really not. It's your opinion that Marvel had such great production values. I disagree completely... as I stated previously, I can barely tolerate to look at old Marvel Masterworks. The art is too crude, and the stories are to simplistic or naive. Or "escapist," if that makes you feel better. I can look at the artwork in Civil War and actually call it art, whereas some of the early Marvel stuff looks like crude caveman drawings by comparison.

 

If you want to call this good art:

 

And this bad art:

 

Be my guest, but I think you're nuts.

[PeepsChicken]

Spiderman, Batman, Superman, the FF, Hulk, Thor, Capt. America were icons within less than 20 years of their creation. Spiderman was created in 1962. Ten years later in 1972, he was more recognized world-wide than even Superman. I remember the article appearing in the Chicago Sun-Times back in '72 talking about this. And while you might argue that Superman was more well known, Superman had a 23 year head start on Spiderman! And still Spiderman rivaled or surpassed him in recognition. He was famous world-wide. So what took DC decades to achieve, Marvel achieved in 10 short years. By the early/mid 70's, a mere 10 years after introducing them, Spiderman, Hulk, Thor, Capt. America (ok, he had a head start), and the FF were as popular and iconic as Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, etc. So no, it does not take that long to establish success.

 

So name for me all those characters created in the mid-late 80s, 90's, and into 2000's who are anywhere near as well known after 10, 20, or 25 years who are as well known all over the world (or even just to the general non-comic reading masses in America). I can't think of a single one, off hand.

 

Yippee. Classic characters are classic. Film at 11. Notice that all of those characters you cited are either golden age characters, or they're the famous characters from Marvel's creation in the early 1960's. Your claim has been comics abruptly declined in the mid-1980's... so tell me, where are all the classic cherished characters created from say 1965 up until 1985? That's a pretty big window with no "classic characters" created.

 

I don't suppose all these characters' success had anything to do with when the massive number of kids in the baby boom generation came of age, more than any inherent quality of the characters? Hmmmm. I don't suppose the advent of the internet or other factors could have affected the popularity of characters? I suppose baseball cards suddenly became unpopular around the same time because the became of lesser quality, instead of other factors?

 

Correlation != causation.

 

They never pass out of memory. I love those forgotten characters. So much so, that I started a website for them! Good opportunity to interject that. For those who love forgotten characters, enjoy!

 

Forgotten Characters HQ

 

That's great that you remember them, but really, how many people besides you remember them?

 

Oh yes, we can. We need only look at the long runs of great writers and artists on so many titles, the sheer creative output, the world-wide popularity of those characters, and the number of awards won, along with the credentials and talent of the creators of comics back then. Only a non-informed comics fan could possibly claim that today's comics offer better material (or even equally good material) than the earlier ages of comics. It's simply not true.

 

Baloney. If you want to make claims that Neil Gaiman's Sandman, or Y the Last Man, or any number of stellar series that have been critically acclaimed, won numerous awards, and generated both comic book AND mainstream appeal, then make them, but I think the claims will fall on deaf ears. Hell, the mere existence of Vertigo should make any reasonable person consider your claims false.

 

Agree about DC, not about Marvel. And you also have to consider Atlas, Harvey, Charlton, Dell, Gold Key, EC, and all the other companies back then producing good comics. Far more high quality to choose from than any other time.

 

I'll take Dark Horse and Image over most of those any day. I can't see Gold Key producing a gem like Chew or Hellboy, or a long, excellent run like Larsen's Savage Dragon.

 

Not nearly as stupid as reading about Batman being "able to defeat anyone given enough time to plan it", or Marvel characters turning into zombies and eating one another, or modern day politics being pushed through comics by their moron writers.

 

I'm not responding to the Batman/Galactus straw man/dead horse again. As for Marvel Zombies, the original was loads of fun, with excellent covers that were homages to classic books. The follow up books weren't so great. And I don't mind politics in my comics, so long as they're not shoving a particular agenda down my throat.

 

Agreed that Alan Davis is better than most Golden Age artists. I never claimed the Golden Age was great as far as art or writing. But he would be an average to somewhat above average artist in the Silver or Bronze Ages, not one of the better ones.

 

You've taken leave of your senses. He would put the vast majority of them to shame.

 

You sound like someone who grew up on modern comics, not the classics.

And you, vice versa. It's perspective bias.

 

The difference is, in a X vs. Y thread, I don't try to tell people that arguments based outside my favorite era are invalid.

 

Again, enlighten us as to precisely which artists/writers/comic companies have, in the last 25 years, created such memorable characters as Spiderman or the Hulk, keeping in mind that Spiderman was at least as popular as Superman (who enjoyed a quarter century head start) within a mere 10 years of his creation, as were the Hulk and others. Show us a single decade-long run of almost exclusively high-quality writing and art, comparable to the Lee/Kirby runs on Thor and FF or Lee/Ditko/Romita on Spiderman, in the last 25 years. Hell, show me any comic in the last 25 years that sold 1,000,000 copies or more a month. The population of the USA has literally doubled since comics were selling a million copies (or more!) a month, and yet sales today are down to less than a a fraction of that. The Top 300 selling comics in Jan of 2009 were nothing in comparison. One title at 300,000, three at 100,000 and the rest in far lower numbers. Only the top 22 sold more than 50,000 issues, with only 4 of them above 100,000. Half of those top 300 sold less than 10,000 copies, or 1/100th as much as comics in my day. Pathetic.

 

Which comics are you talking about selling 1,000,000 copies or more a month? I know Superman had that many issues printed per month, but not sold in the mid 1960's. Amazing Spider-Man was way less than that.

 

In any event, in the last 25 years, I already showed you two comics that sold 8 million and 5 million respectively. Show me a single comic in the Golden, Silver, or Bronze age that EVER did that. As I said, sales figures are a stupid way to make an argument, because sales are NOT directly correlated to quality, and sales are also influenced by other factors outside of the comics field. Kids don't play with action figures, comics, baseball cards, or go outdoors nearly as much now days, because they have advanced video game systems and the internet.

[PeepsChicken]

Cap cannot take a full powered punch (or even a half-powered punch) from Iron Man. End of story.

Correction: Cap cannot absorb a full powered punch from Iron Man. He can take the punch in other ways, as I've shown you with posted pages. Enjoy being wrong.

 

Correct, because the author of that post presented his argument as Iron Man punching away at Cap, with no qualifiers. Was Iron Man holding back? Was his armor almost out of power? Again, logic and common sense. Cap cannot survive punches from Iron Man. Yes, you can write it as Cap ducking and rolling with it or Iron Man holding back, but when it comes to all-out combat, where one has to win, Iron Man kills Cap. Cap cannot "take punches" from such a powerful being. Rolling with them or ducking is not "taking punches". Taking a punch implies getting hit full on and surviving it. You're just playing at semantics here, we all know what was being discussed.

I think people can read for themselves and determine who's being dishonest here. You're backpedaling in a desperate effort to avoid being wrong, and who's playing semantics? I showed you multiple instances of Cap getting punched by Iron Man and surviving. Would he lose eventually? Sure. But you're now trying to parse the discussion as if it was "Can Cap take getting punched by Iron Man with total impunity." That's not what you or anybody else was talking about.

 

 

Not shifting arguments at all. The author of that original post (of which I cannot be bothered to look up - was it Pooda I believe?) stated that Cap was being punched round by Iron Man and that he got thrown through a brick wall and all that. If all Iron Man was trying to do was capture Cap, sure, that's common sense too...he would not be throwing full powered punches. The premise presented to me was simply that Cap was standing toe to toe with Iron Man and taking punches, which is absurd. Given more information, we can clarify the matter, but my premise still stands, ie Cap cannot take punches from Iron Man and survive.

Yes, he can. As I've shown you. And as I've stated at least one rationale for (and a skilled writer could come up with more). Cap might not be able to absorb infinite punches from Iron Man, and he might not even be able to absorb a direct full powered blow, but using his reflexes and ability, he can most certainly "take a punch" from Iron Man, which is precisely what we were discussing.

 

Not sure how you came around to warping that argument, but you're wrong once again. I am indeed talking about how they were portrayed for the bulk of their existence, especially before comics went to hell as far as quality, continuity, internal consistency, logic, common sense, and tradition.

 

:lol: Ok, so by "for the bulk of their existence" you meant "for the bulk of their existence, except I don't really mean the bulk of their existence, just the part that agrees with my argument. In fact, just disregard the bulk of their existence." I'm beginning to understand.

 

"Really good"? They are amongst the greatest comic artists and writers of all time! None you mention hold a candle to the ones I mentioned.

And I disagree. Subjective tastes, and all that. I don't think I've ever seen a Golden, Silver, or Bronze age artist that holds a candle to Mignola, and he's just one of the modern guys.

 

 

Stuff like anatomy, storytelling ability, proportion, perspective, etc. for openers. Again, try taking an art course or something so that you can have a clue what you're talking about. Just because you are ignorant of something does not mean it doesn't exist.

 

I'm only "ignorant" of the subject if "ignorant" means I refuse to come up with pseudo-scientific rationales to justify my own opinion as if it's something more than my mere opinion.

 

CaptainMarvel in praise of something he likes: I enjoy that because I find its art pleasing or its storytelling compelling.

Xorr in praise of something he likes: This is obviously the only sane good choice, because of [litany of factors that are nothing more than a restatement of original opinion].

 

The point, which flew above your head like the space shuttle, is that comics back then were indeed more complex than you give them credit for. You're confusing complexity of writing with social relevance or, more accurately, political commentary. The modern Civil War crap from Marvel is political commentary. GL in the 70's was social relevance mixed with political commentary (with a heavy emphasis on the latter). I can appreciate some social relevance in comics, but not political commentary or preaching, which is what GL by O'Neil/Adams was and why I did not like it. Comics are about escapist fantasy. Complex stories have always been around. The Silver Age was all about making comic stories more complex than the Golden Age comics. Comics "matured" in the Silver and Bronze Ages. Stories were far more complex. The aforementioned GL stories, most of the Lee/Kirby Thor stories, most of the Lee/Kirby FF stuff, etc...so many comics back then had detailed, complex plots. Look at the classic Ultron plot in Avengers #160-171 or the plot of Avengers #172-177 with Michael the Enemy. Or any of the Dr. Strange issues of the Silver Age.

 

Hyper-realism and political commentary is no substitute for fun, complex, entertaining stories as we had in the Silver and Bronze Ages.

 

That's a false dilemma. You're making the mistake of believing the because something has hyper-realism or political commentary, that it can't be fun, complex, or entertaining. In my view, the good stories can have elements from both sets. I enjoyed Civil War; it certainly had political commentary, but it was also highly entertaining to me (in large part because of the absolutely gorgeous artwork).

 

And again, saying the comics have to be escapist is an absurdly myopic view. I don't read Walking Dead because it's escapist. I read it because it's a well drawn, well written story with interesting characters in a fascinating situation. Maybe some Kirby dots or spandex would make it more to your liking?

 

You call a universally recognized classic "juvenile". You're just a typical adult reader who cannot appreciate, understand or remember what it was like to be a kid. You're the kind who thumbs his nose down at classic comics because they're "beneath me", and who praises haughty, badly written crap simply because it has an adult theme. But since you've admitted that you don't know squat about Galactus (and yet feel qualified to comment on him), and have admitted that you know nothing about objective standards of writing (and yet still feel compelled to offer an ignorant opinion on it), there is no point to further discussion between us, now is there? You've prove you don't know what you're talking about.

 

Could you please point to where I said I "don't know squat" about Galactus? I said, "I don't know enough about him to say how deliberately he was planned"; that doesn't mean I'm not familiar with his stories, origins, motivations, appearances, etc. I'm just not familiar with interviews given about the subject.

 

Oh please. I like such "haughty" comics as Deadpool and the Incredible Hercules. Both books are ridiculously fun and don't take themselves seriously. I have no problems with comics not being serious. I just don't turn into a big whiny baby when I encounter comics that ARE serious, or not "escapist." Comics can be more than the juvenile male power fantasies you're pigeonholing them into.

[PeepsChicken]

My point is that you deny history. DC and Marvel have tried "wiping clean" their history, but that does not mean it doesn't exist. And they screw it up by trying to wipe part of it clean while they deny the rest. It's pure ego, matched with equal amounts of stupidity. No one in comics these days has anywhere near the talent of the Silver and Bronze Age writers and artists, and yet these modern hacks think they can re-invent the wheel. They cannot. They simply made a mess of it. DC continuity is far more convoluted now than it ever was before they "fixed it" with the stupid Crisis on Infinite Earths.

 

We are talking about characters currently published. If you want to cite the abilities of some archaic version of a character, like Silver Age Superman, then go ahead, but add the caveat that's what you're talking about. Most people on this or any other forum will be discussing the current version of the character.

 

You can spin it however you want. My statement is still irrefutable. For continuity purposes, Golden and Silver age DC does not exist. It doesn't matter how much you dislike it.

 

 

It's s shame that you don't understand that there are certain aspects to writing, the adherence to which is universally acknowledged as good writing, and the ignoring of which is considered poor writing. How can you not know this? Did you ever even go to school? I don't even think it's worth my time to go into detail on this with you, because you simply don't seem to know anything about it. Google writing standards or something, or take a class in creative writing or literature.

 

"I'd explain it to you, but I'm obviously too erudite for you to follow." Bugger off. What's the sense in even typing something if that's the sort of nonsense you're going to spew?

 

Facts as established in the comics themselves. Canon is canon. Again we come back to internal consistency and suspension of disbelief.

 

Canon IS canon. Thanks for acknowledging that. Cap taking a punch (or several) from Iron Man and surviving happened in an in-continuity story. As did Spidey beating Firelord. Thank you for acknowledging both facts.

 

"Deal with it and move on". The standard battle cry of those who slobber over the crumbs of crap being handed down to them instead of demanding better. No, I think not. I prefer to demand quality over settling for crap. I accept retcons if, and only if, they are well done and preserve common sense, logic, and consistency. In other words, I can handle a retcon of a dead character not really being dead if they do the story well and it makes sense, but I cannot accept a retcon that illogically and insanely shows a mere mortal beating a god-like being or something along those lines, because that is simply poor writing.

 

Fair enough, so long as you understand than your overly restrictive definition of which retcons are "real" isn't followed by most fans. I suggest you remember that if you're going to debate on the internet. If somebody says "Thor can dent Cap's shield," and your response is "nuh uh, because I don't like the story in which it happened," nobody is going to value your opinion.

 

 

Somebody like Galactus may or may not be a special case. I don't know enough about him to say how deliberately he was planned (Let's not forget that he changed from his initial appearances... he originally showed up in a short sleeve shirt with a giant "G" on his chest. I guess they hadn't hammered him completely out yet.).

 

Well there goes any believability or authority you had, and that can pretty much conclude this debate. You're talking out your backside about something you admittedly have no knowledge of, and telling someone who has much greater knowledge on the subject that he's wrong. You lose.

 

I'm just going to leave my quote juxtaposed next to your (willful?) misinterpretation of it so everybody can see what it looks like for reading comprehension to fail. I'll parse out how you were wrong if you can't figure it out on your own.

 

Ownership does not by default imply wisdom or quality. You're clearly one of the drone consumers who simply accepts whatever crap is thrown out there because it's "official" and because Marvel as a "right" to destroy its own characters. That's slave mentality, not for me. Abusing the property they own the rights to does not magically make it a good thing.

 

Maybe I don't simply live in denial? It's a bit funny having somebody who told me to refer to the "Official" Marvel handbook turn around and chastise me for taking Marvel's word on what's official. And Marvel does have a right to control its own characters. The last three words in that sentence should tell you why.

 

 

Common sense is (or used to be) in many ways universal. You don't touch a hot stove or you get burned. Common sense. You don't walk down the express way...you get hit by cars. Common sense. You don't pump gasoline while smoking a cigarette. Common sense. So yes, we can apply logic and common sense to comic issues. Galactus is a nearly infinitely powerful, god-like being who can do damn near anything...he eats planets, he controls cosmic power, he can resurrect the dead, transmute matter and energy on any level, he can control time, etc. Batman is a non-powered mortal, just like the rest of us. It defies both logic and common sense to claim Batman can beat Galactus, and any such claim is insanity. Period. You cannot make it logical or apply common sense to make it work.

 

Oh for christ's sake, back to Galactus and Batman.

 

Here's the thing about common sense: it's common, meaning that most people share it with you. When you come into a thread and start railing about common sense while numerous people disagree with you, maybe it's time for you to step back and realize you're actually dealing with a debatable issue and not something easily settled as a foregone conclusion?

[Xorr]

CaptainMarvel wrote:

 

Who the hell are you arguing with here?

 

Someone who's having trouble keeping up with the subject, obviously.

 

You keep going back to this Batman vs. Galactus scenario that only exists in your mind. Again, it's unbelievable that somebody would accuse me of crafting a straw-man, when you KEEP repeating a perfect example of it. We're talking about Debate A, and you shift the argument to Debate B and attempt to thrash it down.

 

Get back on topic, stop dragging out this Batman vs. Galactus nonsense, or go start a new thread.

 

Obviously it's hard for you to focus on an argument when it has complexity, but I seem to be able to follow the flow very easily. I was using the Batman vs. Galactus argument to highlight the idea of absurdity and common sense. The scenario doesn't exist in my mind, it exists publicly, where various people have publicly argued that Batman can beat Galactus, albeit with very poorly thought out (or in some cases, not even thought out) arguments. The subject of Batman being able to beat anyone "given enough time to figure out how" came up in this thread as well, so it's highly applicable. Perhaps you haven't argued it personally, but it is within the subject.

 

Nope, I had it right the first time. You're stuck with your favorite era in your mind as the best, and you're unable to let it go. I see it all the time. People who came of age in the 1980's often think that music is the best. People in the 1990's think theirs is, and so on. You have a perception bias you can't let go of, and you're trying to use all the ostensibly objective rationales that really amount to nothing more than restatements of your subjective preference. It's sad, really.

 

Good lord. How naive some people can be. First of all, let's look at my childhood. I was born in 1965, so my earliest comic-reading years were basically 1970 onward, the Bronze Age. By the time I became a true comic fan it was the early 70's. I started regular collecting of comics around 1973, ie that was when I started collecting sequential issues month-to-month and became an actual "fan" in the sense of knowing all about comics. So I was "coming of age" in the 70's and 80's, not the 60's. And yet I have determined that the Silver Age is by far the greatest age of comics ever. So that renders your claim totally and irrevocably wrong. The best years of comics by far ended before I was old enough to read. So your whole argument that I consider the Silver Age the best because it's what I grew up on is dead wrong. You know what they say about making assumptions, making an ass of yourself and all that.

 

The same applies to me and music. My all time favorite band is a 90's band, although I grew up on mainly 60's and 70's music (and some 50's thrown in too). So once again, your theory falls flat.

 

Oh, I "hear" what's being "said." I don't agree with it. I think those numbers are hilariously skewed. If you randomly picked 10 comics from the silver and bronze ages, you'd get maybe 3 that were decent. With modern comics, you'd get maybe 4 or 5.

 

If you believe that, then explain why even the top-selling comics today would have been rated abysmal failures and cancelled with the very next issue if they had sold so poorly back in the day? Explain why nobody from the modern age is considered a legend like Kirby, Lee, Kane, Adams, etc. Explain why there have been no major, world-recognizable, iconic characters created in the last 25 years. I don't expect an answer, just the sound of crickets chirping.

 

Okay, two points:

1) I'm convinced you know NOTHING about what "straw-man" means after reading that paragraph. Perhaps you can explain how you took my statement to be a straw-man? Perhaps an intro course on logic would be in order?

 

Sigh. Let me don my teaching robe once more. From Wiki:

 

"A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.^"

Your argument is a straw man fallacy because you are making the claim that I set an "arbitrary point" at which comics became low quality. That is utterly false. There was a definite point, clearly defined and anything but arbitrary, which I have explained. You misrepresent my claim by changing it from a definable, reasoned point to an arbitrary point. Let's define arbitrary for you:

 

"capricious; unreasonable; unsupported; Determined by chance, whim, or impulse, and not by necessity, reason, or principle."

 

My claim was not by any stretch of the imagination "arbitrary".

 

Class dismissed.

[Xorr]

2) You very much picked an arbitrary date, as far as I can tell.

 

"As far as I can tell" coming from you means nothing, considering how ignorant you've proven to be on so many matters (ie uninformed about Galactus, etc).

 

What factors, other than your subjective tastes, make you choose that date? And let's not use sales numbers to indicate quality.

 

I have already explained this. If you paid attention, I would not have to keep repeating myself. First of all, most of the great runs were over by 1986. All the most recognized talents in the field of comic art pretty much stopped doing stuff, or rarely did anything. Aside from Simonson on Thor, I can't recall a single great Marvel comic in 1986 and beyond. Most of the artists during that era were either sloppy new artists or third-tier hang-ons. Likewise with writing. There were no classic stories in the mid-late 80's on par with the early Lee/Kirby Thor comics or the Lee/Kirby FF comics, or the Broome/Kane Green Lantern comics or the award-winning Archie Goodwin/Walt Simonson Manhunter run. Comic quality dipped precipitously in the 80's. Second, the era ushered in the use of the company-wide mega-crossover specifically done in order to sell toys. This started with Secret Wars. Characters had design changes merely to sell toys. It was a pathetic attempt to bolster sales by tying in the mega-crossover into each title each month in order to get the "whole story". It was nothing short of extortion on Marvel's part. Third, the era ushered in the age of discontinuity and stupidity along with unfaithfulness of the characters. Galctus and Eternity became punching bags for the Beyonder, a trend which continued into the 90's with the absymally stupid Infinity Gauntlet crap. Characters who were intended by definition to be god-like were reduced to common characters to be punched around and abused in order to show how "powerful" any particular uber-villain of the month was. This went against logic, common sense, established canon, tradition, the intent of the design of the characters, and decades of faithful portrayal. Fourth, it introduced no new characters of any significance, nor did it produce any truly powerful stories or any award-winning type stories or great classic stories. No one in their right mind can compare the quality of comics in the Silver Age to the comics of the Rust Age (mid-80's) and claim the Rust Age was just as good. Anyone doing so is simply un-knowledgeable and ignorant of what constitues good art, good writing, etc. And yes, those things can be objectively measured.

 

Sales spiked post 1986, by the way, not dipping again until the mid-to-late 1990's. I guess that period between 1986 and 1995 was really high quality, if we're going by sales. X-Men #1, which came out in the early 1990's, sold 8 million copies. That means that a single issue of X-Men sold more copies than any entire year of Amazing Spider-Man total, pre-1986. X-Force #1 sold 5 million. Both X-Men and X-Force were complete crap in my eyes, but they both put the lie to the notion that sales reflect quality.

 

All due to a combination of several factors, namely the ascendency of comic specialty stores, increased marketing and availability of comics, a population roughly twice the size of the earlier ages, and above all the stupidity of speculators and dumb-ass fans who thought that the 50 copies of X-Force #1 or X-men #1 they bought and bagged would become platinum-priced once they became "collectors items" despite the fact that they were over-produced and are basically today found for sale in the dollar bin at most comics stores (and how I love seeing stupidity punished!). Dumb asses! LOL!

 

And again, those were one-shot issues that sold so well. Back in the day comics were selling a million or even several million copies every month. Not just one or two issues that a bunch of speculating morons bought 50 copies each of.

 

Umm, newsflash back at you: Stan Lee has been involved in a massive amount of total crap over the years. As a figurehead, he's great. When he tries to come up with stuff on his own, he sucks.

 

He's just doing crap to keep himslf busy. His heart isn't in it. He's burnt out and just trying to cling to some semblenceof relevance. And of course, your argument does nothing to disprove that the Lee/Kirby, Lee/Ditko, and other Lee/artist teams are considered some of the greatest comics ever created, and introduced characters who managed in 10 short years to eclipse every character from DC despite a quarter century head start by DC. In other words, your quote above is irrelevant.

 

Okay, so you've conceded DC had poor quality,

 

I've conceded nothing. I've said that from the very start. I know you're desperate to win any single aspect of this argument, given your utter failure so far, but please stop making up false concessions and other such nonsense when none exist. And again, we can point to plenty more great stuff from DC back in the day, award winning stuff, and far more such great stuff than the modern age has ever produced.

 

so we're really just discussing Marvel

 

No, try to pay attention here before I make you write it on the blackboard 100 times. We are talking about comics in general in the various eras. I have (at least twice) mentioned other comic companies at the time including Atlas, Dell, Charlton, Eclipse, Gold Key, Pacific, etc. All featured far more great stuff than modern comics.

 

Here's the problem. You're stating all this as fact, and it's really not. It's your opinion that Marvel had such great production values. I disagree completely

 

And again, your opinion is totally and utterly irrelevant. Art and writing can be objectively graded. Clearly you never went to college, let alone studied literature or writing. And most knowledgeable comic fans would agree that the Silver Age represents some of the finest comics ever done. The Golden Age was a burst of creativity, but the Silver Age is when comics became fully grown, fully aware, fully evolved. You may not agree with it, but those who study comics and understand what constitutes good art (anatomy, proportion, storytelling, perspective, complexity, etc) and good writing know what's what. You can ignore that, but once again your ignorance of a matter does not magically make it go away or not exist.

 

I find it utterly ironic that you (falsely) accuse me of arbitrarily deciding when comic quality dropped and using nothing other than my own bias based on comics I grew up on (once again, demonstrably untrue) when you yourself are arbitrarily dismissing earlier comics due to lack of knowledge on art, writing, and knowledge of characters. Funny how all the most informed people on comics disagree with you. Funny how comic experts disagree with you. Funny how fans of comics who have been around for a long time disagree with you. You have to tell me...how old are you? You definitely sound just like someone who grew up in the 80's and 90's reading the crappy comics of the time because those are the people most prone to not knowing anything about comic writing and art and what makes a classic.

 

If you want to call this good art: Be my guest, but I think you're nuts

 

If you call the former bad art, then you're insane because it's Kirby at his prime, and knowledgeable comic fans know he's the King. Kirby is one of the, if not THE, finest comic artists who's ever lived. Now the latter is not bad per se. It looks fine to me. But it's nothing special compared to Kirby, Kane, Brunner, Adams, etc. Show me some full pages so we can see the artist's storytelling ability. How about his use of perspective? Gotta see more than a single pic to judge him accurately. But yeah, you definitely have to be someone who grew up on the modern crap. That really explains things.

[PeepsChicken]

 

For someone who claims to be able to give a textbook definition, you've certainly displayed a lack of understanding of the term. What an oxymoron. "I know it but I don't know it".

 

I would suggest you look up the term "oxymoron" to figure out why it's not applicable. It'll be before "straw man" in the dictionary. You can look them both up at the same time.

 

n

Which is where suspension of disbelief and internal consistency come in. We agree to believe that Flash can physically run as fast as he can. This isn't science fiction, it's fantasy. So we accept that. However, it must consistently make sense, it must have internal logic. It ruins suspension of disbelief if today Flash can run at the speed of light, tomorrow only at the speed of sound, and later only as fast as a race car, then at some point later back to the speed of light. You clearly don't understand the concept, as evidenced by your confusion over this.

 

Your assertion that we can suspend our disbelief with regard to his abilities is correct. And you're partially correct that if his abilities change without justification, we can strain that suspension. My point, which you've apparently missed entirely and which I'll restate for your benefit, is this: we agree to overlook certain things in order to gain entertainment. You, however, appear perfectly willing to engage in this behavior with some things (Flash's speed), but with other less fantastical things that still make complete sense within the context of the story, you're unwilling to engage in the suspension. To me, that's pointlessly nitpicky, and I believe it's a disingenuous way to justify your own tastes without admitting it's all simply just a matter of taste.

 

 

You clearly don't have a clue what you're talking about. I said that Cap cannot "take punches" from Iron Man and live, not that he could not duck or otherwise evade them or roll with them, or that Iron Man could not hold back (thus allowing Cap to survive), or that the two could not engage in combat (although Iron Man would clearly win eventually). You consistently do this...you evade, obfuscate, and misinterpret. Cap cannot "take punches" from Iron Man. "Taking punches" implies getting hit head-on, full force. And in that case, Cap is dead on the first punch. End of story. Only a fool would argue otherwise. However, Cap surviving a fight with Iron Man can be explained without destroying suspension of disbelief because we can turn to logical, sane, common sense explanations that do not require a series of unbelievable assumptions. In other words, we can logically and with common sense, especially based on knowing the characters and their powers and attitudes, believe that Cap is trained highly enough to roll with and avoid the full force of the blows, or that Iron Man is holding back most of his power on those punches. Cap surviving a fight with Iron Man can be explained without resorting to impossible, illogical, absurd assumptions that do not fit with continuity or canon. Cap surviving "taking punches from Iron Man" (ie getting beaten about full power) is absurd.

 

I... I can't say it any more clearly than this: I have shown you pictures of Captain America taking punches from Iron Man. Nobody, and I repeat nobody, is claiming that Captain America can stand upright, stiff as a board, and take a full power punch from Iron Man. That's not the argument that you've been presented, so arguing AGAINST that argument serves no purpose.

 

 

The very idea is stupid in so many ways, I have no idea where to start. First of all, the idea that Iron Man's armor has "recorded every punch [Cap] has ever thrown" is idiotic in the extreme. Your claim that Stark's involvement with SHIELD grants him access to "countless amounts of footage" is even more absurd. In order to accept this idiotic crap without destroying suspension of disbelief, we must posit the existence of many illogical, impossible, contradictory assumptions.

 

First, you ask us to believe that SHIELD has somehow magically managed to record on film every moment of Cap's life, so that they have on tape "every punch he's ever thrown". They would have to have taped every moment of his life because how else would they know when he's going to throw a punch or get into combat? Now I ask, how did SHIELD manage to do that during the Avengers/Defenders War, when Cap was in the Dark Dimension fighting alongside the Defenders against Loki and Dormammu? SHIELD was not there. How did SHIELD manage to videotape all the punches thrown by Cap on Other-Earth or Earth-S (whatever they call it these days) during the Serpent Crown affair in Avengers #141-147? SHIELD was not there. I didn't see SHIELD present when Cap fought alongside the Avengers against Michael the Enemy in Avengers #176/177. SHIELD was not present inside the various underground areas, back alleys, warehouses, and other locations where Cap has fought enemies. What do they have, a tracking device surgically implanted in one of Cap's eyes? So your claim about SHIELD taping all of Cap's fights is absurd and ridiculous on that level alone, and on that level alone destroys suspension of disbelief via egregious offenses against logic, common sense, and historical precedence in comic stories.

 

Of course "every punch he's ever thrown" was hyperbole, and I assumed as much when I read the issue. But I wouldn't doubt for a fact that they have his entire fighting repertoire on file. It's not like he's got an infinite number of moves; even if he knows 1000 punches, an astounding amount, that would be easily cataloged.

 

But you're right. The US government's top secret spy agency wouldn't possibly have an interest in recording the moves of its one and only super soldier.

 

And it's not like any villains (*cough*Taskmaster*cough*) are known to keep footage of Captain America to study. So why would a top-secret spy agency? Craziness.

 

Second, we have to believe that someone took the time to sit down and fast-forward through 30+ years of tape in order to extract only the punches and combat scenes from Cap's life, so that the program could examine his moves. That alone would take decades.

 

Oh hogwash. You're basing the second presumption on the first erroneous assumption. Unless Captain America has been engaged in combat for decades (as in, spent actual decades fighting, not had intermittent fights spread out over the course of decades), we're not talking about that long a period of time. What percentage of fights do you believe Tony was there with Cap for, for that matter?

 

I know you don't like modern comics, waah, waah, but Tony was portrayed in a very consistent light. He snagged DNA from Thor near their first meeting, which he used to make the clone-Thor seen during Civil War. Is it that far fetched to believe he had a backup plan to deal with Steve as well?

 

 

Third, you ask us to believe that Iron Man was able to create a program that could parse through all the hundreds of thousands of punches thrown by Cap in a lifetime, and then actually be accurate enough to predict (with unerring accuracy) every one of an infinite number of possible combat combinations that Cap might use, and that it could compute that infinite number of possible combinations fast enough to beat Cap's nearly super-human reflexes.

 

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, assume you don't know about Extremis, and chalk that up to your willful ignorance of modern comics. Tony more than had that capability during the Civil War arc.

 

 

Fourth, you ask us to believe that Iron Man specifically did so for Cap alone, which makes no sense because Cap is an ally, not an enemy. Yeah, I assume it's part of that idiotic Civil War story, but in any case that brings us up to another issue, namely...

 

As I stated above, he didn't do so for "just Cap alone." He also had contingencies for at least Spider-Man and Thor as well.

 

Fifth, the idea that Iron Man can do program his armor in that way effectively renders him unbeatable by anyone since he can predict every move his opponent is going to make even before they make it, regardless of who the opponent is. And if he did that for Cap, why isn't he now programming his armor to do the same against every other foe he's ever faced? Or do you ask us to believe that SHIELD only video taped ever punch Cap has ever thrown, and not anyone else's?

I don't know... maybe it had something to do with the fact that there's no point recording Hawkeye's, or Daredevil's, or anybody else's martial arts moves when you can record Cap, especially when Iron Man had infinitely greater access to Cap's moves? Or maybe it had a little something to do with the fact that Cap was leading the resistance, so maybe the leader of the pro-registration forces thought it would be a good idea to study him more closely. I guess that would make too much sense though.

The entire concept was bred in some stupid drooling fanboy writer's imagination, who undoubtedly thought it was "kewl" when in all reality it was an idiotic idea that destroys all suspension of disbelief by asking us to assume multiple levels of both improbability and impossibility. It asks us to assume things that go against established precedence, against the very stories preceding it, against logic and common sense (which exist whether you choose to believe in them or not) and against any sane measure of storytelling.

 

Yes, I'm sure the writer was sitting at his keyboard drooling. One of the most successful writers of the decade, with at least two movies to his credit, but you know best, I'm sure.

 

For what it's worth, here's a definition of "fanboy": Fanboys are often experts on minor details regarding their hobbies, such as continuity in fictional universes, and they take these details extremely seriously. The term has also been applied to criticize perceived fan elitism.

 

It takes a massive, massive amount of gall for you to characterize ANYBODY else as a fanboy, Mr. No-Good-Comics-Since-1986.

 

And consistency is what I have consistently been talking about. Duh! Again, you don't get it and there's no way I can force you to get it since you simply don't want to get it.

 

Maybe if your arguments didn't look like a duck, quack like a duck, and walk like a duck, I would take your assertions that they're a rabbit more seriously? I understand though. If somebody fails to understand your arguments, it must be because the person is a simpleton. It must not be because the person doesn't find the arguments compelling, or even cogent.