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sineala · 2 years ago

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Hi!! I used to be big into superhusbands till about the whole international iron man by bendis (i abandoned there..Tony was too different)... I was wondering, do you recommend current marvel comics? Are they still ridiculously interrupted by crossing over and events?

I am actually really, really enjoying current Marvel comics! I also think now is a pretty good time to hop on board.

If you want specific recs, I have lots of them.

Current comics:

We just got a brand-new Avengers run -- issue #2 just came out this week -- and although Steve isn't on the team (Sam is), Tony is there, and Carol is the team chair. Many of us, myself included, have been really looking forward to this run, because it's being written by Jed MacKay, who is a relatively new writer to Marvel who in my opinion writes comics with very well-characterized characters and a lot of love for the source material. (He is also currently writing what has now become my favorite Doctor Strange run.)

MacKay especially writes a very good Tony; he did an Iron Man annual and an Avengers annual back in 2021 (part of the "Infinite Destinies" series of annuals. The Iron Man one had some very good Tony characterization, and the Avengers annual instantly became everyone's favorite because about half of it is Steve and Tony hanging out at home together, and the other half is Steve and Tony punching robots.

So there's not really a whole lot to say about the new Avengers run yet, but I am excited for it.

(Jason Aaron recently ended a five-year Avengers run. I would recommend skipping it, except for the issue where Steve, Tony, and Thor all go skinny-dipping together in a hot tub. It is the highlight of the run.)

We are seven issues into a new Iron Man run, being written by Gerry Duggan (whom you may remember from 1872), and I swear this is the best Iron Man ongoing comic that has come out since I have been in this fandom. Every issue is actually good, and he's absolutely nailing the Tony characterization, and he's clearly done all the reading. And also Tony is getting whumped hard. I really love it. Every time we get a new issue I am excited to read it because I know it's gonna be good.

(You have missed a couple of Iron Man runs. The Dan Slott run was not all that great, but it had some very sweet canon Tony/Jan and also very pretty art by Valerio Schiti. Then we got Christopher Cantwell's Iron Man run, which was the worst Iron Man run I have ever read in my entire life and featured Tony being a privileged and out-of-touch billionaire asshole who then got addicted to morphine, acquired the Power Cosmic, murdered most of his friends (and, I mean, brought them back, at least), and then decided that he should maybe go to rehab so that he could learn humility which apparently he did not have? My least favorite moment was the bit where Patsy Walker tells him he has no idea what it's like to be suicidal and Tony -- a person who has had at least two on-panel suicide attempts -- agrees that, no, he has no idea what that's like. Anyway. You should skip that.)

I have been kind of meh about the current Cap run (other than the fact that it appears to have given us canon Steve/Emma femdom) because a whole lot of it is basically "CATWS but what if 616" and also they killed off one of my minor-character faves and I am very bitter. There is one more issue left in this run, so you might as well just wait a couple more months and start with the next run, which will be written by J. Michael Straczynski. I know a lot of people have strong feelings about JMS' comics work but I have been a Babylon 5 fan since it started airing and I am excited that JMS, the guy who gave us the "no, you move" speech, is going to be writing Steve. (JMS also wrote Bullet Points, if you liked the Steve in that one.)

(Cap runs you have missed include Ta-Nehisi Coates -- it was fine but for the most part Steve was wildly OOC -- as well as a very short run by Mark Waid whose first arc you should check out because it was absolutely amazing and had great Samnee art. I think you've also missed Nick Spencer's run, which. Uh. I don't even know where to begin with discussing that.)

Recent events:

Comics are still going to be comics, so, yeah, there are always events. Some of them are pretty good, though. If you haven't been here for a few years, you've probably missed AXE Judgment Day, Heroes Reborn, Empyre, and War of the Realms. Possibly also Secret Empire, Civil War II, and Standoff.

Of all of these, I would have to say that AXE Judgment Day (written by Kieron Gillen) was my favorite; it featured the Avengers, X-Men, and Eternals all coming together to save the world from a Celestial that was trying to judge all of humanity and then destroy the planet. You know, the usual. I thought it was pretty well done and had a lot for Steve and Tony to do. They got to be on the same side, for once. Steve got a whole bunch of speeches and everyone got a massive amount of angst; there was actually an entire issue devoted to the Celestial's judgment of Tony. So yeah, it didn't have a whole lot of Steve & Tony together but they both definitely had starring roles for the event.

Heroes Reborn (yes, it would kill Marvel to think up a new name) was an event where Phil Coulson sold his soul to the devil to make the Squadron Supreme have always been the best superhero team on Earth. Coulson has been wedged into the comics from the MCU but Jason Aaron clearly committed hard to making him the most evil person possible.

Empyre -- by Slott and Ewing, art by Schiti -- was probably my second-favorite recent event. It once again featured heroes fighting villains, as is right and proper. Steve and Tony weren't the stars of the event or anything but they did, you know, get to help out a bit. It was a bunch of Kree-Skrull stuff and everyone fought some tree people whose names I am blanking on and it also ended in Billy and Teddy's Big Gay Jewish Space Wedding, so obviously you have to appreciate that.

I remember very little about War of the Realms. It was one of those Asgard things.

You probably missed Secret Empire? And possibly the lead-ins to it, Avengers Standoff and Civil War II. This was infamously the event where Steve was replaced by an evil Hydra version of himself who decided to make America into his own personal fascist state. (Standoff was the event where he was secretly replaced although we did not know this at the time; he spent all of Civil War II -- a Carol vs. Tony event, this time with Tony ending up in a coma at the end -- gaslighting all the heroes pretty hard.) Public reaction to Secret Empire was, as you can imagine, very very bad (they decided to promote this as "this is the real Steve and he has been evil forever" rather than, like, "hey we're doing a villain AU for the next six months") and they ended up concluding the whole thing much faster than they had originally planned to, presumably because the sales tanked hard. They basically did a very, very bad job with this one.

Secret Empire has mostly provided a lot of source material for fandom to pick apart and improve upon -- especially the people who like villain AUs -- and its major highlight is a lead-in one-shot, Civil War II: The Oath, which is a villain remix of The Confession in which Hydra Steve addresses Tony's comatose body and, among other things, tells him that the real Steve loved him, and that he always loved him, even when they fought. So, you know. We all enjoyed that page.

Other fun things you might have missed:

There have been a bunch of fun relatively-recent miniseries!

The thing you will probably be most interested is Captain America/Iron Man, which is a five-issue miniseries by Derek Landy of Steve and Tony teaming up to take down a villain (who is, of course, one of Tony's exes). It has some lovely character moments. The collected edition of this is called "The Armor and the Shield."

Jed MacKay -- yes, the guy writing Avengers -- also previously wrote a run of Black Cat that had a lot of Tony cameos, and then decided to write an Iron Cat miniseries in which Felicia & Tony team up to defeat both of their ex-girlfriends who have decided to try to murder them because apparently, yes, they both have terrible luck with relationships. (In Tony's case, this is Sunset Bain.)

We're also currently getting an Ayodele & Akande miniseries, I Am Iron Man, which is set at various points in Tony's history and I have to admit that I have literally no idea what's going on here but at least it's clear that they really like Tony, and it's sweet.

In what I can only assume was an attempt at some kind of MCU synergy, we just finished getting a second Secret Invasion miniseries (written by Ryan North of Squirrel Girl fame) which was an extremely clever series in which basically nothing was as it seemed, and also Tony was one of the major characters. I really, really liked this one.

If you like weird AUs, we also recently got a (Tom Taylor, I think?) miniseries called Dark Ages, in an alternate future where electricity has stopped working. It did have Steve and Tony.

It is not specifically Steve & Tony related but we just got a Wasp miniseries by Al Ewing, which is Jan's first solo book ever. Yes, ever.

And it has nothing to do with Steve and Tony at all, but I feel like people who don't ordinarily read Guardians of the Galaxy might really enjoy Ewing's run on that, because it is incredibly queer. Phyla-Vell and Moondragon are main characters, Billy and Teddy come guest-star for a lot of it, Avril Kincaid (the new Quasar, who is also gay) is there for a bit, and also the overarching relationship plot is "Peter, Gamora, and Rich decide they all love each other and are all going to be in a relationship." This is extremely heavily implied. There are multiple love confessions and the run ends with them embracing. So yeah, Pete/Rich is canon now. It's great.

That's all I can think of for right now.

#replies #lucrezianoin

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pers-books · 2 years ago

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Tom Stoppard and Jemma Redgrave back £1.25m fundraising appeal for Hampstead

NOV 23, 2023 BY MATTHEW HEMLEY

Tom Stoppard, left, and Jemma Redgrave in Octopolis, which recently ran at the Hampstead Theatre. Photos: Shutterstock/The Other Richard

Tom Stoppard, Robert Lindsay and Jemma Redgrave are among supporters of a campaign seeking to raise £1.25 million for Hampstead Theatre to continue commissioning and producing new plays.

It comes as the theatre announces a new season of work for the spring of 2024, which includes four premieres, including a new play by April De Angelis.

The fundraising campaign follows Hampstead Theatre being cut from Arts Council England’s national portfolio last year, meaning it lost an annual subsidy of £766,455, which prompted concerns from writers that the venue would cut back on original work.

It also resulted in the resignation of its then artistic director Roxana Silbert, with chief executive Greg Ripley-Duggan taking over responsibility for the programming.

Ripley-Duggan previously confirmed to The Stage that the studio space would continue to be a home for new writing, but warned there could be cuts to the number of shows staged in the space.

The #HampsteadAhead campaign is a philanthropic appeal for £1.25 million "to propel Hampstead Theatre as it continues to nurture and commission writers, produce new plays and offer significant ticket subsidies to thousands of young people".

A small number of Hampstead’s supporters and trustees have already pledged £1 million towards the appeal.

Playwright Roy Williams said the campaign was "vital to its continued success", while Stoppard added: “Just being here at Hampstead Theatre makes me feel the necessity of theatres like this, not just surviving but flourishing. It’s a lot to do with succeeding generations of writers and that’s why the #HampsteadAhead appeal is important.”

Ripley-Duggan said Hampstead’s aim had "always been to present outstanding new plays and champion original talent".

"Philanthropy is at the heart of Hampstead’s future and with £1 million already pledged towards our new £1.25 million #HampsteadAhead appeal, we want to say thank you for the rock-solid support of our patrons, audiences and trustees," he added.

The new season opens with the world premiere of The Divine Mrs S by De Angelis, directed by Anna Mackmin, about 18th-century theatre actor Sarah Siddons. This runs from March 22 to April 27, with press night on March 28.

Michael Longhurst returns to Hampstead Theatre to direct the UK premiere of Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Between Riverside and Crazy, from May 3 to June 15, with press night on May 13.

Concluding the season on the main stage is Christopher Hampton’s Visit from an Unknown Woman, an adaptation of a short story by Stefan Zweig, which will be directed by Clare Lizzimore and runs from June 21 to July 27, with press night on July 1.

The Hampstead Downstairs programme includes Grud, a first play by Sarah Power, directed by Jaz Woodcock-Stewart, Richard Molloy’s The Harmony Test, directed by Alice Hamilton, and Richard Nelson’s An Actor Convalescing in Devon, written for and performed by Paul Jesson and directed by Clarissa Brown.

“We’re thrilled that, as we approach the end of our first year without government subsidy, we can still offer such a rich and varied programme of new plays for our audiences to enjoy," Ripley-Duggan said.

#Hampstead Theatre #Jemma Redgrave #Tom Stoppard #Fundraising Appeal #Theatre

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donnatroyprincessofthemyscira · 2 years ago

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Marvel Comics New Releases for Wednesday, August 9, 2023

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mariacallous · 2 years ago

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Is liking Ayn Rand a personality defect? Before she was the godmother of American libertarianism, Rand was a writer known for insisting on the virtue and beauty of self-interest. To her admirers, her books, including “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged,” celebrate exceptional men and women who make their own flourishing a moral imperative. To her detractors, Rand’s novels, as Lisa Duggan writes in her 2019 study “Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed,” glamorize rapacity and violence; they grant happy endings to characters who showcase “contempt for lesser beings and a cool indifference to their suffering”; and they “provide a structure of feeling—optimistic cruelty—that . . . underwrites the form of capitalism on steroids that dominates the present.”

Since Rand’s death, in 1982, she has been embraced by tech billionaires (Peter Thiel, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk), free-market politicians (Ronald Reagan, Clarence Thomas, Rand Paul), and their acolytes. Elsewhere, she has become a pop-cultural bogeyman, ridiculous but unkillable. Find her on “The Simpsons” (“Russian weirdo Ayn Rand”), “Parks and Recreation” (“a terrible writer”), “Girls,” “Watchmen,” and “The Mindy Project,” invariably dressed as a menace or a punch line. The presence of “Atlas Shrugged” or “The Fountainhead” on a bedside table or Tinder profile is a waving red flag—reliable shorthand for latent sociopathy. A friend, in order to lend me a copy of “Atlas Shrugged” for this piece, stowed the paperback in a manila folder that she then stapled shut and handed off to my partner at their mutual workplace. He smuggled it down the hall and into his bag. “I didn’t think I’d get fired” if anyone saw the book, he explained, “but it wouldn’t look great.”

In “The Book of Ayn,” a novel by Lexi Freiman, Rand takes on a new role: North Star for the cancelled. Anna, a mid-career writer who comes from money, has just published a “contrarian” novel about the opioid epidemic, a satire of the rural poor full of “bad haircuts,” “misspelled tattoos,” and pants-shitting. “I had honestly believed I was writing a book so good it metabolized its own badness,” Anna explains, somewhat touchingly. Instead of the acclaim she expects, Anna gets dropped by her publisher and ghosted by her friends; even her old prep school rejects a last-ditch job application. On Twitter, she is enjoined to jump off the balcony of her pied-à-terre on Madison Avenue and to use her novel as a parachute.

Worst of all, a review in the New York Times suggests that Anna is that current-day bête noire, a “narcissist.” Devastated, Anna borrows a friend’s book on narcissism and reads that narcissists are “selfish, arrogant, and insecure,” “grandiose and fragile and incapable of handling any threat to their identity,” and that they “saw themselves reflected back everywhere, made grand narratives of their lives, but felt at their core that they were empty.”

To Anna’s horror, the descriptions remind her of herself. She is empty, she realizes. She doesn’t believe in anything; all she can do is make fun of people. Seeking a counternarrative, Anna gloms on to a tour group discussing Ayn Rand in a coffee shop and, soon after, orders a bundle of her works. She’s immediately enthralled. The books argue that “selfishness was a form of care” and that “wealth was a beautiful thing.” They claim that “true freedom lived . . . in the breaking of bonds and severing of ties.” As Anna reads, she feels her weaknesses becoming strengths. Her selfishness, she realizes, is radically ethical. She may not get invited to parties anymore, but she wouldn’t enjoy them anyway—she’s too radiantly liberated.

In “The Culture of Narcissism,” his famous 1979 study, Christopher Lasch writes that the narcissist can only overcome insecurity “by seeing his ‘grandiose self’ reflected in the attentions of others.” Freiman slyly casts Rand as Anna’s “grandiose self,” the mask she pulls on over her pain and vulnerability. Anna, you might say, has suffered a narcissistic injury and is turning to Rand to preserve her positive self-image.

An elderly millennial in the shitposting era, Anna shrouds her new obsession in layers of self-protective irony. Rand’s ideas give her solace, and being a “ ‘Randgirl,’ ” in scare quotes, appeals to her contrarianism, her desire to provoke and outrage the commenters who want her to jump off a balcony. When Rand was in her late thirties, she moved from New York to Hollywood to write for the big screen. Anna decides to follow in her footsteps. She decamps for Los Angeles and reinvents herself as a television writer, pitching a sitcom, inspired by “Bojack Horseman” (although she swears it’s not), about a farm animal named Ayn Ram. Even as Anna hopes to rehabilitate her hero for a contemporary audience, she places some distance between herself and her subject by wrapping Rand in the soft wool of humor—a defense mechanism that Freiman suggests originates in a tragedy in her early life. When Anna was three, her infant brother died “for no reason” in his sleep. Provocation “smoothed the edges,” she says, a fleece that muffled the sharpness of loss.

With its undercurrent of childhood trauma, “The Book of Ayn” evokes Mary Gaitskill’s classic treatment of the Randgirl plot, “Two Girls, Fat and Thin,” from 1991. That book’s narrator, Dorothy, imprints on a Rand-like character named Anna Granite after being abused and molested by her father as a teen-ager. “By the time I was seventeen, I had a very negative view of life, and a horrific view of sex,” Dorothy tells Justine, a journalist writing an article on Granite and her fans. When she discovered Granite’s books, Dorothy says, “suddenly a whole different way of looking at life was presented to me.” Ostracized at school, she draws comfort from Granite’s depictions of “proud outcasts . . . surrounded by the cold glow of their genius and grace.” In bed with her father, she clings to a dream of “strong, contemptuous beauty . . . indifferent to anything but itself and its own growth.” Dorothy comes to believe in a philosophy called Definitism—Gaitskill’s thinly veiled version of Objectivism, the doctrine developed by Rand—and it confers on Dorothy the power and value that she believes herself to lack; Granite herself seems to nurture the girl in loco parentis. As a college student, Dorothy buys an interstate bus ticket to attend one of Granite’s speaking events and imagines her idol, how “she would look at me and know everything I’d endured.” At the lecture, she weeps uncontrollably, convinced at last that she is “damn strong,” that she is “worth something.”

“The Book of Ayn” and “Two Girls, Fat and Thin” plead for sympathy for the Randgirl. Like Freiman’s Anna, Gaitskill’s Dorothy is a case study in vulnerable narcissism and, ultimately, a figure of pity. She retreats from the world and into daydreams about Oz and Never-Never Land, epic tales in which she plays the hero. She hides behind delusions of grandeur, raging when Justine asks her “stupid” questions. These are broken people to be handled with gentleness, the novels seem to argue.

But, in fact, both books have a more subversive intent: to trouble the distinction between Randians and everyone else. In “Two Girls, Fat and Thin,” Justine, the freelance journalist who interviews Dorothy, is disgusted by Granite’s ideas. She’s identified as “neurotic” and Dorothy is not; the contrast between them conjures Freud’s dichotomy between pliable patients who obediently adopt the terminology of their analysts and difficult patients who prove too self-absorbed to undergo transference. But Justine, who, unlike Dorothy, is pretty, thin, and popular, incarnates Rand’s notion of the beautiful brute more than Dorothy does. As a girl, she picked on schoolmates who had fewer friends; at one point, transported by “swelling arrogance” and “boiling greed,” she sexually abused a weaker child with a toothbrush. The more Gaitskill reveals about her characters, the more they blur together, as both selfish and selfless at once.

In her penetrating monograph “The Selfishness of Others: An Essay on the Fear of Narcissism,” Kristin Dombek describes a narcissistic behavior called “splitting,” wherein the narcissist idealizes that which soothes him and discards that which causes him pain. “Splitting” is also the main structural mechanism of the two novels—and a mental trap that both their protagonists and their readers must resist. Like “Two Girls,” “The Book of Ayn” is built on a seemingly clean division: Part 1 tells the story of Anna’s intoxication with Rand; in Part 2, Anna, breaking violently with Objectivism, goes to a meditation camp on the Greek island of Lesbos to try to murder her ego. Freiman’s Los Angeles is a cesspit of superficiality and selfishness, but the “Beloveds,” as the cultists who run the retreat in Greece call themselves, aren’t much better. The group’s master is known for his collection of three hundred and fifty Harley Davidsons and for releasing “a vicious strain of European bee into the hostile neighboring farmland.” Other seekers at the commune steal Anna’s clothes, cheat on their partners, and neglect their children. Anna, unconsciously emulating Rand, begins a love affair with a much younger man, a refugee from an unspecified war-torn country. Life on the commune can’t heal the effects of his “hard-core trauma,” he tells her. Only Hollywood can; he longs to “try the acting.”

So is everyone a delusional, self-serving, trauma-masking Randian narcissist at heart? You could call that the lesson of the Randgirl novels, although you’d be underselling their sweetness. The books mock their characters, but they also argue that egoism can be nourishing and even generative. Gaitskill’s treatment of Anna Granite, for instance, is unexpectedly sympathetic. When Dorothy first meets her idol, the older woman models kindness and empathy. Dorothy panics, unable to speak; Granite, Dorothy says, “stood and gripped my shoulders with both hands . . . her eyes radiated the gentlest strength I had ever experienced, her tough, hot, callusy hands supported me with the full intensity of her life.” Granite tells Dorothy that she can see her suffering but also her resilience and value. She offers her a job. Because Granite has willed herself to believe in her own worth, Gaitskill hints, she is alive to the worth in others. And, in awakening Dorothy to her own inner resources, Granite awakens the young woman’s sense of her fellow-humans as sovereign selves. In the hours before Granite’s lecture, Dorothy is transfixed by passing faces: “the jowls, the eye wrinkles, the bumpy noses, the flower-petal quality of young female skin.” When Dorothy was in college, individuals had streamed together into a monolithic threat. But “as I walked among the citizens of Philadelphia,” she says, “I felt as though I occupied a compartment of personal space that they instinctively respected as I respected theirs.”

Freiman finds less to salvage in Rand’s life or work, but the novel is rightly skeptical of the wellness industry’s promises to subdue the demands of selfhood. After failing to make a TV show and then failing to kill her ego, Anna takes stock. She comes to realize that she can’t write without self-esteem—and that writing, more than being a contrarian or even a good person, is her vocation. “There was only one thing that ever helped me,” she says. “One thing that had always been there, strung up at the threshold of my mind like tiny golden lights, enchanting me into life, dangling its whimsy and warm lozenges of hope.” This thing is writing—“only writing promised me happiness, or at the very least progress”—and the type of writing Anna wants to do, voicey and spiky and singular, requires an “I.”

Unlike the self-aggrandizer, the artist, Freiman implies, uses her “I” as an alloy, creating a material both durable and porous, blending what she has felt to be true with what she imagines might be true for others. The writing that Anna intuits will save her dangles at the “threshold” of her mind because it directs her both in and out. Throughout the novel, as she flails around trying to fill her perceived emptiness, what she fills it with are the words, ideas, and lives of roommates, romantic partners, Internet commenters, friends, influencers, yoga instructors, cult members, Antifa activists, and embarrassing conservative philosophers. She reads their books, goes to their events, and stays in their homes. By the end, her “I” has been vastly expanded: other people live in her head, whether she wants them to or not, shaping the innermost contours of her self. This vision of identity as plural means that self-assertion does not necessarily come at the expense of the rest of the world. It could even be a declaration of life on another’s behalf.

Both Freiman and Gaitskill play up the Möbius-strip aspect to selfishness and selflessness—when I stand up for me, they suggest, I am also standing up for you, because we are intertwined. At their most persuasive, though, the Randgirl novels don’t applaud the morality of self-interest so much as they paint self-absorption as a useful but transient phase. Freud characterized narcissism as a form of arrested development. The narcissist, instead of sprouting healthy attachments to others, remains stranded in the oceanic self-involvement of infancy. Gaitskill and Freiman rescue this creature from a state of frozen pathology, returning her to her rightful place within a developmental stage. Dorothy and Anna, perhaps, are just passing through necessary bouts of self-infatuation on their way to maturity. Late in “Two Girls,” Justine comes to appreciate the role that Granite played for Dorothy, even as she believes that Dorothy has outgrown Granite:

When you read Granite’s work not only did she awaken your sense of beauty and pleasure in life, not only did she illustrate for you a positive use of strength and power, but she provided a springboard for you to create an internal world richer and stronger than the external world which wasn’t giving you any support at all. But she was only the departure point.

Instead of a bogeyman or a red flag, maybe Rand is just a set of training wheels, or a trellis on which characters can temporarily support their unfurling selves. “Everybody had a moment of loving Ayn Rand,” Anna’s mother tells her—it’s a low point for our Randgirl, but a reassurance to readers, who are happy to welcome this lost sheep back into the herd. ♦

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scienceninjaturtle · 6 days ago

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GODZILLA DESTROYS THE MARVEL UNIVERSE #2 (OF 5)

GERRY DUGGAN (W) • JAVIER GARRÓN & PACO MEDINA (A) • COVER BY MARK BROOKS

VIRGIN VARIANT COVER BY MARK BROOKS

VARIANT COVER BY ANDREA SORRENTINO • VARIANT COVER BY STONEHOUSE

MARVELIZED GHOST-RIDER-ZILLA VARIANT COVER BY DAVE WACHTER

ACTION FIGURE VARIANT COVER BY JOHN TYLER CHRISTOPHER

FAN FAVORITE VARIANT COVER BY JEFF ZORNOW

THE LETHAL PROTECTOR BECOMES THE DEADLY DESTRUCTOR AS GODZILLA BONDS WITH A SYMBIOTE!

• As the KING OF THE MONSTERS sets about making mincemeat out of Manhattan, EARTH’S MIGHTIEST HEROES find reinforcements in the most unlikely of places – the villainous patrons of the BAR WITH NO NAME! Will their combined efforts be enough to slow GODZILLA down – or are they merely adding fuel to the fire as the VENOM SYMBIOTE discovers an even more enticing apex predator to latch onto?

• Plus, BLACK PANTHER makes a shocking discovery about the nature of VIBRANIUM and what is driving Godzilla’s rampage!

• But will it be enough to make a difference in the wake of the disappearance of MR. FANTASTIC, THE INVISIBLE WOMAN and THE ENTIRE BAXTER BUILDING?!

32 PGS./Rated T …$4.99

#marvel comics #godzilla destroys the marvel universe

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thatsastepladder · 3 months ago

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I've had it in my head for a bit that Marvel's big issue right now is that editorial is absolute garbage in multiple ways - one of which being that they can't attract good writing talent to work for them (artists are a different story), and any good talent they do attract is hamstrung by editorial mandates.

So I've decided to do a bit of an unscientific study - looking at Marvel's March 2025 releases vs. DC's and comparing the level of writing talent on each. Now, I'm biased toward or against certain writers, so I'll need a more objective metric to judge it by.

Unfortunately, League of Comic Geeks doesn't have an "average user rating of this writer's works" stat or anything, so we're left with my subjective impressions.

So let's get started:

First, I want to get a list of all writers who have a book out for each company this month (ignoring anthology books, Star Wars, reprints, and cross-media tie-ins):

Marvel only: Ryan North, Yoon Ha Lee, Derek Landy, Sabir Pirzada, Tony Fleecs, MacKenzie Cadenhead, Collin Kelly & Jackson Lanzing, Benjamin Percy, Spencer Ackerman, Christos Gage, Gail Simone, Murewa Ayodele, Jed MacKay, Mark Russell, Geoffrey Thorne, Eve L. Ewing, JMS, Charles Soule, Saladin Ahmed, Joe Casey, Erica Schultz, David Pepose, Stephanie Phillips, Ashley Allen, Alyssa Wong, Bryan Hill, Jonathan Hickman, Peach Momoko, Joe Kelly, Greg Weisman, Dan Slott, Steve Foxe, Gerry Duggan, Evan Narcisse, Greg Pak, Jason Loo, Zac Gorman, Alexis Quasarano, Steve Orlando, Katharyn Blair, Cody Ziglar, Frank Tieri.

DC only: Kelly Thompson, Scott Snyder, Jeff Lemire, Rex Ogle, Nicole Maines, Joshua Williamson, Tom King, John Ridley, Mark Waid, Ram V, Ryan Parrott, Christopher Cantwell, Jeremy Adams, Jamal Campbell, Morgan Hampton, Simon Spurrier, Alex Segura, Josie Campbell, Leah Williams, Brandon Thomas, John Layman, David Dastmalchian, Matthew Rosenberg, Joey Esposito, Jeph Loeb, Tom Taylor, Torunn Gronbekk, G. Willow Wilson, Elliott Kalan, Dan Watters, Tate Brombal, Christian Ward,

Both companies: Jason Aaron, Al Ewing, Deniz Camp, Tim Seeley, Chris Condon, Phillip Kennedy Johnson

Okay, looking at this list a few things are obvious:

Marvel is continuing with their "put as much product on shelves as possible" strategy that hasn't worked for them in the past 10 years, putting out a ton of books, many with writers who I went "literally who?" about.

As I suspected, DC has a higher proportion of writers I'd consider good - or who are considered to be good by the wider comics community, as has been the trend since they got rid of Bob Harras and Dan Didio. This is made especially more evident when controlling for the Ultimate and Absolute universes - Marvel loses Hickman, Momoko, Condon and Hill, while DC gives up Jason Aaron and Scott Snyder. (both lose Deniz Camp.)

However, this isn't conclusive - several writers for either company have worked for the other in recent memory (Lanzing and Kelly), or have books coming out for the other in the near future (Dan Slott).

That being said, DC's lineup is a lot more top-heavy, especially on major books. It's telling that Marvel can't attract major writers to its flagship characters - Spider-Man especially is stuck with a rotating cast of characters from the Brand New Day era, but all of the main Avengers (save Thor at the moment) have this issue as well.

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daydreamerdrew · 3 months ago

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Comics read this past week:

Marvel Comics:

Captain Marvel (1968) #15-16

These issues were published across May 1969 to June 1969. Issue #15 was written by Gary Friedrich, who also drew the breakdowns, which were finished by Tom Sutton and inked by Dan Adkins. Issue #16 was written by Archie Goodwin, penciled by Don Heck, and inked by Syd Shores. Both were 20 pages.

the Gwenpool stories in Howard the Duck (2016) #1-3

These stories were in issues published across November 2015 to February 2016. They were written by Christopher Hastings, drawn by Danilo Beyruth, and colored by Tamra Bonvillain. All were 10 pages.

Gwenpool first appeared on a variant cover drawn by Chris Bachalo for Deadpool’s Secret Secret Wars (2015) #2, which was published in June 2015. This is Gwenpool’s first appearance in an actual comic story.

Gwenpool Special (2016) #1

This issue was published in December 2015. It was a Christmas anthology.

It contained a 20-page She-Hulk story, set at her office building’s Christmas party, which was written by Charles Soule, drawn by Langdon Foss, and colored by Megan Wilson.

A 10-page Ms. Marvel story, which was written by Margaret Stohl, drawn by Juan Gedeon, and colored by Tamra Bonvillain.

A 10-page Hawkeye and Deadpool story, which was written by Gerry Duggan, drawn by Danilo Beyruth, and colored by Cris Peter.

And a 10-page Gwenpool story, which was written by Christopher Hastings and drawn (including colored) by Gurihiru.

the Nick Fury stories in Strange Tales (1951) #151-152

These stories were in issues published across September 1966 to October 1966. Stan Lee is credited as the writer for both, with the Grand Comics Database listing Jack Kirby as an uncredited co-plotter. Jack Kirby also drew the layouts for both stories, which were finished by Jim Steranko. Both were 12 pages.

The Incredible Hulk (1968) #292-294

These issues were published across November 1983 to January 1984. All were written by Bill Mantlo and penciled by Sal Buscema. Issue #292 was inked by Joe Sinnott, and issues #293-294 were inked by Gerry Talaoc. Issues #292-293 were 22 pages, and issue #294 was 21 pages.

Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars (1984) #1

This issue was published in January 1984. It was written by Jim Shooter, penciled by Mike Zeck, and inked by John Beatty. It was 23 pages.

Fawcett Comics:

the Captain Marvel Jr. story in America’s Greatest Comics (1941) #8

This story was in an issue cover dated Summer 1943. The writer and artist are unknown. It was 12 pages.

the Captain Marvel stories in Whiz Comics (1940) #103 and Captain Marvel Adventures (1941) #90 and The Marvel Family (1945) #29

These 7 stories were published in issues cover dated November 1948. They ranged from 7 to 9 pages.

Eastern Color Printing Company:

the Connie strips in Famous Funnies (1934) #84-89

These strips were written and drawn by Frank Godwin. Famous Funnies was an anthology book that collected newspaper comic strips. I don’t know when these strips were first published, but these issues were cover dated July 1941 to December 1941. Each strip was 3 pages.

#comics read this past week #my posts

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