[ SECRET POST #2408 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2408 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 051 secrets from Secret Submission Post #344.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

08. http://i.imgur.com/N37MwhN.png

[(Anonymous)]

After seeing the picture in your secret, I thought the secret was going to be "Maybe the comic industry is dying because it's sooo much easier to sit through a 2 hour movie of hot men and cool explosions than reading a 1848203 installment comic series"

*

[(Anonymous)]

*1848203 installment comic series of shitty, unoriginal writing

(not OP, I just welcome the death of "the comic industry")

[dinogrrl]

Makes sense to me :p.

Though I do agree with the OP's actual secret There are series I'd like to get into (or ones I started loooong ago and haven't kept up with) but where the f do I even begin seriously.

[kaijinscendre]

This is why I will never get into comic books. Too many story lines/AUs, how the hell is a newcomer supposed to get started?

+1

[(Anonymous)]

I refuse to get into any canon that requires me to read wikis just to understand what's going on. I want to be able to pick up something and just start reading, no background research needed.

STOP BEING LAZY

[insanenoodlyguy]

But Hawkeye is standalone! It's exactly what you want!

[(Anonymous)]

I think that's why a bunch of them rebooted recently. Marvel had a bunch start over, I just jumped in with Avengers vs X-men, my movie knowledge, and the almighty google. It hasn't been that difficult. Now I've got a 20 dollar a week habit. (and Hawkeye and Gambit are my 2 faves right now).

I think DC also just rebooted with the new 52. Or there are plenty that are not the big ones, I got a neat indie Mermaids one at Free Comic Book day this year.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

About once every 5 years, I consider going back to my second fandom (after SF&F) and trying to get back into X-men comics. And there's something wrong with the industry that I can write programs in a half dozen different languages but can't figure out how Marvel retconned the retcon they retconed to fix the wibbly wobbly timey wimey continuity issues around Days of Future Past, about all I can figure out is:

* A different Grey/Summers brat is going to be a messiah.
* Scott is the asshole Mother Mary, possibly John the Baptist as well.
* there are either too many mutants or not enough mutants.
* Wolverine probably has a new woman in the walk-in refrigerator of his background, and possibly a new clone/son/uncle/father/godson/student as well.

The Science Directorate has determined that time travel stories make sensible readers want to kill their own grandfathers to escape the torment of trying to figure out badly written time travel stories.

[transcriptanon]

[Picture is the main superheroes from the recent Marvel live action movies/franchises "The X-Men", "Spider-Man", "The Avengers", "Iron Man", "Wolverine", "The Fantastic Four", "Ghost Rider", "Elektra", "Daredevil", "Blade" and "The Punisher", all lined up.]

Maybe the comic industry is dying because they've made it so difficult to get into them - without having to read all the different issues and all the different series because they want to be special and make major plot points in one comic show up in another and time skip it in the original comic, like hell I'm buying it now.

Bonus Secret: Oh, God, I'll get to Hawkeye when I feel like it.

[mekkio]

Oh, for Pete's sake, you don't need to read every single issue of everything DC and Marvel has put out. That's what's Google is for. Reading a Superman book and don't know who Kon-El is when he pops up in the story? Google him. Cloned human/kryptonian hybrid who was once made as a weapon but is now Superboy. Done. Moving on with the story. I know this works because I just started getting into the Superman series. It's not rocket science. It's comics.

If you don't want to read the comics, rock on with your bad self. But don't make it sound like those of us who do are no life nerds who never do anything but read every issue of everything.

[(Anonymous)]

You've got a point. I've sometimes thought the same thing, and I say that as an on-again, off-again fan of superhero comics. The massive shared universes are an integral part of the mainstream U.S. comic industry, and it's something that fans would scream bloody murder about if you tried to take it away, but I wonder how much good it's doing.

It's worth noting that it's mostly just an American thing -- in the two other big comic markets I'm aware of, Europe and Japan, crossovers are rare and big shared continuities are pretty much nonexistent. And though it's hard finding sales figures, especially for European sales, it's pretty clear the American market isn't very healthy in comparison. The bestselling American comic in 2012 is estimated to have sold about 350,000 copies. The bestselling Japanese comic magazine in 2012 sold about 2.8 million copies. And that's even more impressive when you consider it per capita -- Japan's a less populous nation than the U.S.

[reactions_r_us]

[(Anonymous)]

yeah, I absolutely need stories with continuity.

[dazzledfirestar]

I think you're seriously overestimating the presence of the crossover events. I have a very VERY full pull list and haven't bothered with any of that crap since... oh, Secret Invasion? So... mid 2000s. And even then the arcs in specific ongoing titles are usually pretty stand alone with a vague connection to the big event anyway. And they'll give you the pertinent information for that story anyway.

If you want to dive in, just do it. Really. It is REALLY not as hard as you think it is especially with the plethora of stand alone titles out right now.

Also, it's kind of a dick move to wish death on an industry that provides a fair few people with joy just because you don't see the point. So... *shrugs*

[(Anonymous)]

i couldn't read a lot of comics even when i was younger. for the most part i found them very guy-oriented (bulging muscles, barely-dressed women, and plots that revolved around stuff i wasn't interested in - Batman especially always seemed particularly violent and dark, and i was so not into that. I have read some comics I enjoyed, but to be honest i don't really try anymore.

i did like manga for awhile as a teen / early twenties, because it was prettier and didn't feel like i was invading the boy's club, but i got out of it too, mostly not interested in reading the plots available now that i'm older, and less impressed by the art style overall.

[(Anonymous)]

I liked the few short series I've read, but the long continuing arcs with endless crossovers stress me out too. Half the time I can't just directly google/wiki the character because it doesn't even say who it is, which means I have to search the issue for character appearances to see who was in it and what each of them looks like. Sometimes, even when I know what the character looks like in other issues, costume changes throw me off. Art style factors in as well.

And sure, I don't need to know who ALL of the character are, but when someone seemingly random drops by to say a sentence that has the other characters reacting emotionally, not knowing why keeps me from being invested in the rest.

[(Anonymous)]

oh OP you do not want me to get started on WWH or the Skrull invasion. So many neat series divided and spread across standalones and other series. I was (am) a very pissed off person over that

Granted I don't want comics to die over it, just to...stop doing that please, you're my enjoyment a chore

[silverau]

I feel kind of similarly. I think I would LOVE superhero comics if more of them were released in simple volumes like Runaways, instead of coming out in a million different issues that I'd have to track down in order to read them, and then with all the continuity issues and different canons and crossovers it's like... how does ANYONE get into comics who hasn't been reading them forever? That's why I mostly stick to manga I guess.

[(Anonymous)]

JFC, it's like no one in this thread have ever seen a comic outside of capes or manga. Comics are doing fine.

/My feels about comic book continuity

[blunderbuss]

I agree, OP. It's not even the difficulty of catching up with decades of history; you can catch up or get the abridged version easily enough.

It's the retcons, the badly executed crossover events, bad writing, bullshit editorial choices, 'shock' deaths and general bad management that turn them into a godawful mess. I WANT to get into DC and Marvel, but every time I try some bullshit like One More Day or Cassandra Turned Evil happens and kills my interest to get invested.

Hell, look at how DC tried to reboot itself. It's pissed off all the old fans and STILL made it as confusing as hell for new fans because no one knows what's still canon and what isn't!

The worst of it is, there's easy ways to make things easier for new fans. Fred Perry's series Gold Digger had 200+ issues but he really makes sure new fans can catch up and understand all the characters and concepts (of which there are MANY). He writes every 100th issue as a new jumping-on point. He writes encyclopedia-issues dedicated to explaining the world, mechanics, history and lore of the series. And best of all, whenever he hits a new milestone he makes huge chunks of his old comics completely free for download.

Sure, Marvel and DC have way more comics than just 200+, but if they dedicated the time to making things as clear as possible for fans, then they wouldn't have to keep rebooting or other dumb crap.

[(Anonymous)]

When you say THE comic industry you just mean YOURS, right?
*smug laughter*
*sips on wine*

[(Anonymous)]

I couldn't agree more.

And to everybody saying, "just google it", that kind of underestimates the complexity of the whole mainstream superhero comics clusterfuckityness. If you've been reading those kinds of comics your entire life, yeah, you probably have a decent handle on what to read, what not to read, where to start, who's a must-read comics writer and whose art is really superb.

If you're just a new fan who liked a movie and wants to investigate further, you go on Wikipedia and see that a character has been around since the 1950's or 60's or 80's and aren't quite sure where to start, and what the new series is, or whether the new series/reboot is just so shitty it's not worth your money and what the relevance of such and such crossover event is to this character. It's perfectly possible to figure it all out with a simple google search, but if you're literally only just jumping into this whole thing, it can be extremely complicated. Compare this to liking a Harry Potter movie and then going to a bookstore and buying the books to read them.

Sometimes people are just lazy, but other times they just don't know where to even begin, and sometimes they just don't feel like it's worth it to spend time just figuring out where to start with a particular character or a series. Especially when you don't know whether you'll like the thing in the first place. It's like that with anything; if something is easily available and easy to figure out in terms of where to start with it, people are more likely to check it out.

[(Anonymous)]

I honestly feel the same way. Some - not all - comics make it work to get into them but, depending on your level of interest, it can really be worth it. For my part, I felt extremely overwhelmed when I first started reading Marvel/DC and I asked for "help" from another user (complete waste of time, frankly; they were elitist and unhelpful to the extreme).

In the end, I just browsed, picked up a title that looked interesting, and read it. If I didn't get some of the references, I backtracked (and googled) to understand the current storyline. It was a pain in the ass but I've enjoyed what I've read so it's working for me.

Anyway, though, there are a lot of independent or less well known titles that are just as (or more) fabulous that are really worth checking out so if you're really frustrated I'd say start with those and worry about "mainstream" later.

[(Anonymous)]

That's why I stick with the movies. I don't need a bottle of Tylenol to understand what's going on.