That way there would be an easy pick-up point to jump in. Some things could continue over, and some things referenced, but you would be able to follow a general story arc as it builds and resolves.
It would be far easier to tell someone they should pick up season 8, with numbering starting at 1, than what newcomers get now.
Big shifts in style and substance just start again with their own series, they do that now but the numbering and titling get wierd, and it is sometimes really hard to follow.
Before it died, I was a big fan of the company Crossgen Comics, which was founded by a bunch of Big Two exiles who wanted to "do it right" as they saw it, and made quite a bit of progress in that regard. One of their innovations was that, once they'd been running for several years and begun to suffer bloat, they began marking certain issues as "Key Issues", meaning that they were good jumping-on points for the series. Each one had a plain white background for the cover which made them really stand out on the shelves. It was an admirable idea, which sadly came a bit too late to save the company, it seems.
Both Marvel and DC have done exactly what you're both talking about: DC's "New 52" was meant specifically to appeal to new readers, as is Marvel's "Season 1" TPBs and their Point One one-shot issues. In fact, Marvel's Avengers Assemble comic was meant to be a direct jumping on point for readers who had seen the Marvel movies but weren't comics readers.
While you can argue as to the success of these initiatives--I'm not a fan of the New 52, particularly--but you can't argue that Marvel and DC aren't trying to make comics accessible.
I've never heard of Season 1 / Point 1, but Marvel does have the Ultimate Universe, which is a very definite step in the right direction IMO. I don't know much about New 52, but frankly DC has done so many Final Infinite Crises on Multiple Universes that I don't even really care. They've generally been a bit less continuity-obsessed than Marvel anyway I think, at least with their flagship characters; everybody knows who Superman is, but almost nobody has actually read everything about him, so I think DC is generally fairly good about telling you most of what you need to know and not making too many assumptions about which previous stories you've followed. (They still do that kind of stuff, and have been worse about it at some times than others...the whole Green Lantern -> Hal Jordan -> Parallax -> Spectre -> Kyle Rayner -> Green Lantern thing comes to mind....but I think in general they're slightly better at keeping it from getting out of control, because they seem to have a bit more reverence for their flagship properties, which Marvel plays a little faster and looser with. And Marvel is frequently more about teams than individual heroes anyway; they generally are more comfortable with constantly-changing team rosters and the resulting interpersonal imbroglios, while with DC this is basically just the JLA, and the heroes spend plenty of time by themselves even if they have JLA membership.)
Marvel's Ultimate Universe has been in existance for over a decade now--saying it's a good jumping on point isn't accurate anymore. Besides, they're in the process of blowing it up, via the Cataclysm storyline which is about to end.
And, honestly? Your points on DC directly contradict each other. DC's "Infinite Crisis" and "52" events were both designed specifically to reset the discrepencies in DC continuity. Explicitly, that's why they were written. If anything, Marvel's been much less concerned with having an "established continuity" than DC has.
Fair enough, I should have said Ultimate Marvel was a step in the right direction, back in its time. I hope that in another ten years they'll do something similar.
Hm. Okay I can see why you would think that's a contradiction. DC invents excuses to avoid caring about continuity, which can be argued as either caring about continuity or not doing so; I was arguing the latter but I see what you mean about the former. But Marvel is the one where every D-list mook from the Mighty Marvel Bullpen days turns up later and becomes a recurring feature, no matter how inherently lame they are. Ever heard of The Melter? Or the Frightful Four? The Wrecking Crew? "Paste-Pot Pete"? (Okay, admittedly, that one gets lampshaded in the books to fairly decent comedic effect.) Marvel is never content to just sweep their embarassing mistakes under the rug, while DC probably has a vice-president in charge of doing exactly that, albeit in ridiculously overcomplected ways.
Leaving it to writer/editor fiat shows a lot less "concern" about continuity than actively trying to police or reset said continuity.
And what's wrong with those villains? The Frightful Four led directly into the Inhumans Saga in Fantastic Four and were among their original foes. Yeah, they might not have the gravitas or weight of Doctor Doom or Ultron, but they're entirely servicable villains for a story arc or two. The Wrecking Crew were made to provide a foil for Thor: average guys who get Asgardian powers, in response to the Asgardian god forced into mortal form. They're no Loki, but they do they job--they usually provide muscle for other, larger-reaching villains.
But Paste Pot Pete? Yeah, he's kind of a loser. Hawkeye makes a great jab at him in the animated Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. But, the point remains: not every villain needs to be an all-encompassing, monologuing supervillain. Variety is the spice of life.
Honestly, I've found many comics to be incredibly accessible lately. You'd be hard pressed to find a comic above issue forty from DC or Marvel these days. I don't really think The New 52 knows who its audience is, but Marvel Now! has been incredibly accessible. Peruse your local comic shops, folks. Times are changing.
shrug I'm mostly thinking of their original leader, "The Wizard"…can't remember offhand who the rest of them were. But he was thoroughly idiotic, and if you think he was "serviceable", then I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.
But, the point remains: not every villain needs to be an all-encompassing, monologuing supervillain. Variety is the spice of life.
I look at it differently. It's impossible for anything in a story to happen by coincidence; the writer chooses to create everything. Therefore, I believe he should choose to create everything well, holding himself to the highest quality standard, considering all the implications of everything, and never committing anything to paper that will make people cringe in a handful of years. The stores of shelves are littered with low-quality dreck; I believe people should know when NOT to create, because it isn't ready yet, because they don't have the talent to do it well. Mind you, I don't want to stifle creativity, and comics are fantastically creative, most especially in the visual arts aspect, somewhat so in the storytelling as well…but in both cases, there are certain missteps. Whether it's a storyline that sounds like an eight-year-old thought it up, or a costume design that even said eight-year-old wouldn't think was even remotely cool, many things have existed in a comic somewhere which ought to have been written off as an unfortunate miscalculation, and buried deeply to ensure they never again see the light of day. Instead, they get brought back time and again, in every more absurd morasses of continuity, and I mourn for the wasted potential, the vastly better stories and artworks that could have been created if only some empty space had been left for them to grow into, and time taken to cultivate them, instead of letting the proverbial "garden" be choked with metaphorical "weeds", ugly and useless things that refuse to die.
In Johnathan Hickman's recent run on Fantastic Four, the Wizard played a pretty important role as part of the "Council of Doom", as convened by Reed Richards. The Fantastic Four were tasked with preventing an interdimensional attack by the alternate Reed Richards-es of other parallel dimensions, so they gathered the FF's notable rogues together to figure out how to outsmart the smartest man in the Marvel universe. These included Doctor Doom, the Wizard, the Mad Thinker, the High Evolutionary, and several others.
Wizard's role was particularly notable in this as the FF had, in an earlier issue, liberated a pre-teenaged genetic clone of Wizard from one of his laboratories and had been raising him alongside Franklin and Valeria Richards. The conflict of having to work with a known, noted villain, particularly in the shadow of raising his biological son, increased the dramatic tension of the scenes significantly. Without the Wizard, that dramatic tension just doesn't exist. Writing him off as "unimportant" or "silly" actively stifles the neat creative things that can be done with such a character.
It's easy to write off a character like the Wizard as silly. But, what's silly--or, to use your words, "dreck"--to one person, is enjoyable and fun to another. I'll never understand the appeal of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, but my wife and several of my friends absolutely love it. I absolutely love He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, while some others view it as the worst of 80s commercialism-driven cartoons. You've got to keep in mind: your taste is not a be-all, end-all. "Ugly and useless" to you might be a beautiful rose to someone else.
Oh, and regarding 8 year olds writing comics storylines? I recommend you go look up Axe Cop. In addition to its obligatory Munchkin game, it's now in its first season as an animated series on Fox.
You should check out "Atomic Robo'. Their business model is exactly what you describe. They basically put out one volume per year of 5-6 issues. The main character is a robot made by Tesla in the 1920s whose stories span from back then to slightly in the future. The volumes also do not take place chronologically; so one volume might be in the 40s during WWII and the next will be modern day. If you use comixology they have the first issue and all the free comic book day issues up for free to check it out with no monetary risk (I also think they are on their website for free as well). BTW I would hightly recomend volume 3.
Envisioner
I hear your complaints, but feel the industry as a whole is getting way better. While Marvel or DC are not completely ignoring previous contiunity, they are taking steps to make comics new reader freindly. There is some really great titles in Marvel NOW and The 'New' 52 (I'm sorry two and a half years is not new anymore)
Also if you really want to read good comics that aren't in a shared universe try Image or other smaller publisher books. Saga is fantastic, Chew is great, Locke & Key just finished up and just may blow your mind and if you want to read superhero stuff Invincible is the best superhero comic being printed today. Now all of these books have at least 20 issues (over 100 in the case of Invincible) which might run into your continuity issue, but they are at least self contained stories that do not have to worry about what's going on in Crossover X, Obsure Title Y or Flat Out Bad Title X(men Legacy).
Most are being carried by libraries that you'd be able to get through the Inter Library Loan system if your local branch does not have what you want. So you can try for free.
This argument is sounding a lot like "I didn't like it, therefore it should have never been created," which is a little absurd. You seem to be coming at this thinking that the artists/writers that make these comics aren't trying to do their best work or at least do the work that they feel is necessary within the scope of what they're trying to accomplish. Well, even if you personally think something was absolute crap (a valid opinion), I guarantee you that someone else enjoyed it thoroughly. Costume designs or dialogue choices that you don't agree with were likely another reader's favorites.
I think it'd be a major mistake to try and put an entire artistic medium into a small box and say "This is how these should be made" and shrug off everything else as garbage. You may have your own criteria for what makes an enjoyable comic, and that's great. But that criteria may not match the thousands of other consumer demographics that comics cater to.
That's not exactly what I said, but I do often read other things (including Invincible, which I like less than some other things but am generally quite fond of). I used to read more library comics, and the current state of my life has made this less practical, which is probably one of the reasons that I'm generally crankier than I used to be. In the case of Marvel and DC, I love the general idea that they're in a shared universe, but disagree with many fine details of how that status is executed. I have a hard time generalizing about what I would fix and how, without pointing to specific stories/titles/issues as examples…generally it's a "I'll know what I like/dislike when I see it" kind of thing. But in general, my thesis is that because some Marvel and DC comics are as amazing as, say, "Superman: Birthright" or Grant Morrison's run on the X-Men, while others are as ridiculously awful as most of the Mighty Marvel Silver Age and a huge swath of the Countdown to Final Crisis era, one should treat the entire thing as a one would a smorgasbord of food, some of it delicious and some of it awful - throw the stale, rotten stuff away and serve only the good.
There is a difference between my personally disliking something and my believing it is objectively bad. I would never call Roger Zelazny's "Nine Princes in Amber" badly written, even though I hated the main setting conceit (f**k you, Only-Real-Reality-That-I'm-Just-A-Shadow-Of, I happen to think I and the universe that made me are pretty damn important) and wanted to see all of the characters die horribly. Conversely, I was in the process of liking Lyda Morehouse's "Archangel Protocol", but the ending not only ruined the book for me, it proved to me that (at least at this point in her career) she wasn't actually that good of a writer, having resorted to a plot point that a typical teenage girl might have considered too lame to put in her self-insert fanfiction. I have guilty pleasures, and I have works that are "just not for me"…but I also have things that I'm quite confident deserve all the disparagement I can hurl upon them.
You seem to be coming at this thinking that the artists/writers that make these comics aren't trying to do their best work or at least do the work that they feel is necessary within the scope of what they're trying to accomplish.
I think that in a great many cases, they're trying to punch a proverbial timeclock, grinding out adequate pabulum in order to meet a deadline, so that the publishing company can generate enough sales to repay their investment. Which I consider not only uninspiring, but downright unacceptible. My economic belief is founded on a very firm rejection of Pournelle's Iron Law, and of capitalist thinking in general: I believe that companies (and in particular companies in the arts field; my standards for, say, constructionor the grocery market are a bit different, because these are physical needs rather than ideological "luxuries") ought to actively try to put themselves out of business, by sacrificing every penny in their pockets to create the greatest possible product, no matter the cost to their "bottom line". If they successfully capture lightning in a bottle, they may get rich as a justly-deserved consequence of their excellence (which is what I believe >G did by creating SOTM, and seem to be at least mostly still doing), but they shouldn't expect this any more than a person who buys a lottery ticket expects to actually win. They should never let their work go out the door until they're 100% confident that it can't be improved upon in any way, and if they do strike it rich, they ought to re-invest those profits into creating the next wonder-work. Any time they fail to turn a profit and are forced to shutter their doors, they should still content themselves that they've contributed a work of genius to the historical record…that contribution, that fame and place in legend long after their death, not mere crass monetary profit that serves their fleeting temporal needs, should always be their aim in founding their enterprise in the first place, nor should they ever fall from those lofty ideals into the trap of complacent commercialism. (Note, of course, that I say all of these "shoulds" in the firm conviction that nobody is ever going to listen to me; I take it as read that the world is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, and that greed and Darwinism are forces as impossible to overcome as gravity, so when I say that things need to change, I don't actually expect that they will. I just think someone needs to be saying it, and I seem to be the only one crazy enough to volunteer.)
You may have your own criteria for what makes an enjoyable comic, and that's great. But that criteria may not match the thousands of other consumer demographics that comics cater to.
I am fine with "different strokes for different folks". I am not fine with "we'll make more money if we target the lowest common denominator, and then shove the resulting feces down everyone's throats until they start liking the taste." No matter how many people like something, it can still be factually terrible; quality is an absolute, not something that is redefined by the consensus of the majority. And I believe that people will like what you teach them to like…if you saturate the market with Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys, then you are intentionally trying to hypnotize the vulnerable-minded into becoming "addicted" to these catchy rhythms, and ignoring the fact that they are just plain bad music. I believe we as a society have a responsibility to defend ourselves against this sort of infiltrage by the forces of mediocrity (though, again, it is a responsibility I'm cynically certain we will collectively shirk).
The problem with your economic wish, no matter if you only wish it upon artistic markets alone, is that it would never stay afloat; not even in a vaccuum. >G got lucky. Very lucky. They are all incredibly talented and I'm glad they hit their stride and are successful enough to continue delivering their amazing games to us. However, they are the exception. They are, as you put it, that lottery winner, especially when you come to know how many other thousands upon thousands of people (equally talented people at that) try their hands at their dreams every day, only see it fail in front of them. Not because they aren't trying, not because they don't deserve success, but simply because they didn't strike the right place at the right time; they didn't get lucky. And for every failure is more resources lost, and while they may continue to fondle the idea of doing whatever they love for a living (art, video games, music, acting, whatever), eventually our basic human needs win out; we need food, shelter, clothing, and in 2014, those things are expensive, even if you want to live modestly. Not to mention the average person is not just looking after themselves, but are supporting families who rely upon their income. Along with a need for income comes a need for a job, a long with a job comes a need for transportation, and a need for auto-insurance and the expenses go on and on.
As much as I'd like to see every single business try and put out the best (which most do anyways, considering competition continously forces companies to one-up each other), the fact is, money wins in the end. And while some parts of that may be a bit shallow, we should all be thankful for it, because in the end, that is what makes our economy go round. Businesses make money, the expand, they create more jobs, more jobs means more people making money meaning they're consuming more, more consumption means more spending means businesses continue to make money. It's an endless cycle and while it may not sit right with everyone's morals or even be the best compared to other theories, it is currently the only viable system in place that provides a lot of jobs allowing most of the people that are in the U.S. (a hell of a lot of people) to have jobs and be able to live a middle class life with a higher standard of living.
Point is, we need that bottom consumer base; we need the companies that are shoveling out the garbage just as much as we need the people consuming them, because it not only cycles into the economy, but it also cycles into the hobby itself. Do you think as many music artists would have the same opportunities had Brittany Spears or the Backstreat Boys ever existed? Popularity creates industry and as an industry grows, it breaks down barriers for more, smaller, unique ventures to take their place. The same goes for comics. Comics have been a slowly dying industry for decades now, and honestly, things were looking pretty grim until Hollywood realized what a cash cow comics could be. They've pumped out super hero after super hero film (some terrible, some great, plenty mediocre) and it has given comic books another chance with a ridiculous expansion of new readers. We need the bottom rung; every hobby, business, interest needs the mass market because they have the money that fuels growth. Want to see your favorite passions continue to thrive? You should be thanking the masses for existing to contribute to their survival. I'm not saying it's right, only that it's the way it is and I doubt any other system in place could create a reasonable alternative.
All of which could be solved very simply if we simply stopped letting the Bernie Madoffs and Rupert Murdochs of the world hoard billions of dollars, and forcibly redistrubted the wealth of the world to give everyone a fair cut. I realize that if everyone had an exactly equal share of the money, nobody would ever spend anything or have any incentive to work…but I believe one of the greek philosophers once proposed a system wherein, for the most successful and hard-working people, their wealth could be no greater than six times the worth of people who supported their work in the most menial capacity - to put this in modern terms, a corporate CEO's salary could be no more than six times that of the lowest employee on the company totem pole. Instead of several hundred times as great. When the wealth gap is that huge, what incentive do the rich have to ever treat the poor as human beings? The two live in such different worlds that communication is impossible; they become aliens, and the more powerful one will happily oppress the weaker. It should never have been allowed to get as far as it has, IMO, and I see little hope that it can be reversed, and none at all without a great deal of bloodshed and awfulness.
Along with a need for income comes a need for a job
Actually I belive that a wage is only the smallest of benefits that a job offers a person; any job you'd only do for the money, you probably shouldn't do at all, because it will starve your soul and destroy you spiritually, having to do something that your entire being rebels against. You should do a job that you want to be doing, in and of itself, and view the pay as at most a cost-of-living stipend, if not simply a nice bonus on top of the satisfaction you derive from following your passions. A job that you'd happily do for free if you had no bills that needed paying, just as a way to occupy your time - what I like to call a Vocation. Mine, for instance, would probably be computer programming, if I had the skills required. Unfortunately, society charges us to develop those skills, instead of recognizing that education needs to be fully subsidized for the common good.
along with a job comes a need for transportation
This is something that should be less true than it is. America far under-emphasizes the need for mass transit and locational clustering (there's probably a better term for that). ideally, we need to be living in arcologies rather than traditional cities; it should be possible to take an elevator from your living quarters directly to your workplace, or to the grocery store or to your children's school, because they're all located in what is essentially one gigantic building. For about the past hundred years, we've been force-fed a thoroughly over-hyped and not-that-necessary addiction to automobiles; they encourage us to waste land on spread-out settlements, isolate us from our fellow human beings through distance, and squander our limited reserves of fossil fuels (oil should almost never be burned as gasoline IMO; it is far more valuable converted into durable plastics for manufacturing, and we don't need to be wasting it by the megabarrel, even if we weren't polluting the air in the process).
and a need for auto-insurance
Now that, on the other hand, is completely unnecessary. The laws mandating it are a huge injustice. We should not charge people money every month to insure their car in case they cause an accident; instead, we should make them less likely to have an accident, and not drain money out of them every month if they've done nothing to deserve such mistreatment.
considering competition continously forces companies to one-up each other
One-upping is NOT by any stretch of the imagination the same as doing better; most companies find it more efficient to put a layer of spit-and-polish on their product rather than actually improving it, because it doesn't matter what the truth is, only how they're perceived. A massive multi-billion dollar marketing blitz can utterly eclipse the competition simply by taking advantage of humans' inherent laziness, their tendency to buy the brand name they're most familiar with even if they know it's not the bes. Corporate espionage and gamesmanship can finesse the company's image, saturate markets, or even farm patents for legal feels…companies have a legion of ways that they can make more money without making a better product. Frankly, it's a wonder they even try to achieve the slightest degree of quality anymore, considering how hard our society works to offer them alternatives.
), the fact is, money wins in the end.
That part, as far as it goes, I agree with completely. This is basically why I am firmly in favor of just taking all the money away from a very small handful of people, by virtue of being a very large number of people who simply disregards the wishes of that tiny minority. Which is of course exactly what they fear, and will sink to any low to prevent.
Businesses make money, the expand, they create more jobs, more jobs means more people making money meaning they're consuming more, more consumption means more spending means businesses continue to make money.
Except that you can't actually create very much wealth, so this endless cycle of business expansion is really just taking wealth away from the many and concentrating it in the hands of the few, while converting it from natural resources into vast quantities of intentionally-obsolescent consumer goods which end up in landfills. People spend too much time worrying about how much THEY own…but resources never really belong to any person, they belong to the entire world, and there's only so much to go around, with that value appreciating slightly due to refinement techniques (turning soft iron into hard steel, etc), but mostly just consisting of wealth being transferred from one area or form to another. In order to enrich one person, you usually have to improverish another - and it's probably not just one other, because the more wealth an individual has, the more they tend to want. It's an addiction; if you allow someone to gorge themselves to the point of sickness, they will, because their ancestors nearly starved and it's wired right into their genes to think they need to hoard their wealth. Our instincts haven't caught up to the change in our reality, and so we're constantly on the verge of destroying ourselves through primitive, obsolete impulses - chief of which is the urge to accumulate wealth, which exists entirely because of the poverty we used to suffer from, and is horrifically counterproductive now that we're fairly unlikely to starve or die of exposure.
it is currently the only viable system in place that provides a lot of jobs allowing most of the people that are in the U.S. (a hell of a lot of people) to have jobs and be able to live a middle class life with a higher standard of living.
The US does not have a lot of jobs; unemployment is rampant, and the "middle class" is vanishing rapidly. People live in states of crippling debt, being forced to mortgage their whole lives away and then hope that a streak of bad luck doesn't cost them everything. Our system is broken, and our society is quite probably dying; it's just a huge dinosaur which doesn't immediately notice when its head is gone.
Point is, we need that bottom consumer base; we need the companies that are shoveling out the garbage just as much as we need the people consuming them
Constant, frenetic activity is not a point in our favor. We're burning ourselves out, exhausting and maddening ourselves with constant activity, because we feel compelled to "achieve" something; our society pressures us to do more, try harder, and all so that we have more money that we can spend on crap we don't need, when if we didn't buy that crap, we wouldn't need as much money to pay for it, and thus wouldn't need the jobs we're creating by buying it. We could de-escalate everything, lower the pressure that we're living under, and be far less likely to catastrophically self-destruct.
Popularity creates industry and as an industry grows, it breaks down barriers for more, smaller, unique ventures to take their place.
Yeah, Wal-Mart clearly did great things for the rest of the retail industry. Lots of new opportunities created there. When someone is allowed to grow too powerful, their first action is usually to crush all possible competitors like bugs. While Britney herself probably doesn't mind if people listen to music other than hers, the record label that's pumped huge amounts of cash into manufacturing her CDs and advertising and booking her tours? They'd like nothing better than to lobby the governments of every nation in the world into making the purchase of multiple copies of every new CD by her mandatory, and thus preventing anyone from ever competing with them. That's exactly the ultimate objective of every capitalist: to dominate the market entirely and attain godlike, limitless power. You have to nip such tendencies in the bud HARD, before they can even begin to snowball, or else it will inevitably happen just as soon as they can get away with it.
I'm not saying it's right, only that it's the way it is and I doubt any other system in place could create a reasonable alternative.
Interestingly enough, we actually have managed to create one, in spite of how heavily stacked the deck is against such options. Kickstarter and other forms of crowdfunding, and more generally the Internet's user-driven models, are the ultimate counterculture, the greatest possible hope of stopping monopolism. We should push harder in that direction; the movers and shakers of tomorrow's world should aim to be like Anonymous, entirely amorphous and self-directed agencies which By God Get Things Done, because they answer to no-one but their own objectives. Ideally, I'd like to see some hypertech applied to really take the concept to its ultimate conclusion…make it so that Internet cables grew like vines, being propagated by autonomous Von Neumann machines, to ensure that any form of monopoly on network access would be extremely short-lived. Decentralization is the answer; make all resources plentiful and accessible to everyone, and do away with any restriction which aims to keep power solely in the hands of the elite.
This thread has departed wildly from being about someone's ideas for new players, making it not incredibly useful for someone who is interested in exactly that. Please take further off-topic discussions to the appropriate forum.
