Barnestorming #7930- Dungeon Command in Review, Starship Merchants, Deathly Hallows Hot

Agreed on Y: the Last Man, and not surprised that you specifically didn't like it, as the writer is a huge Joss Whedon fanboy and it shows, in that he's taken on and amplified Joss's worst traits instead of his best.

I did like Runaways, though. Not SO much that my Runaways books aren't up for sale (anyone want them? they're the nice oversized hardcovers, volumes 1 and 3, volume 1 being self-contained), but good enough to buy and read all of them in the first place, and the fact that everyone in Y talks like a constant pop-culture referencing teenager who thinks they're being incredibly clever? Actually WORKS when the characters are sophomoric teenagers!

I thought the Deathly Hallows Part 1, as a self contained movie, to be rather boring. However, Deathly Hallows Part 2 is a masterpiece and as a set up for the crowning jewel of the series Part 1 serves its purpose.

The books followed that same progression. The first was written very simply and was certainly meant for children. As the series progressed, the writing got more and more sophisticated. Then at last, as happens with many super star writers, it fell victim to a lot of self indulgent crap. Thankfully the movies ignore most of that B.S.

Deathly Hallows Part 2 is fitting finale to the Harry Potter epic. One scene that sticks in my mind is when the school is about to come under assault and the teachers are preparing the defenses. It's superb because you finally get to see them unchained and realize that the faculty of Hogwarts is made up of some pretty powerfully bad asses. Also, I got a distinct "WW2 Britain Under Siege" vibe but that is probably just me.

Oh, and damn, get the f-ing adapter. Don't make me bust out some more jokes about your car and such.

Yeah, I do not get the accolades that Y has gotten at all...it's incredibly _childish_. I mean, the world these people live in is like this ridiculously over-the-top sexist place where people have no way to communicate with each other without referencing the mind-blowing fact that...duhn duhn duhn...men and women are not alike! Then, once the virus hits, it doesn't stop! Then it's all, "well, back when there were men..." "Guess my boob job's useless now" and so forth.

And the endless cavalcade of pop culture references...my...god...man...50 pages and I've already seen references to every song, TV show, book, and move Brian Vaughn has ever liked.

I actually had the first four trades in physical form...took those bastards right up to the Book Nook and traded them in for "Crawling from the Wreckage" (which I already read on Comixology but wanted in print) and that first Morrison Animal Man TPB. Good deal.

Yeah, DH1 is definitely a setup film, but in that it's very Empire Strikes Back. Everything about it made me think of Empire, more so than any other film in the series. It feels like it had finally gotten to the point where nothing had to be explained anymore, and the focus could be on deepening the existing material and priming it for resolution.

Oh man, for a while there I thought I was the only one that couldn't stand Brian K Vaughn. It's not even the dialogue really, it's that he feels so clever that he's not writing a superhero book. "Childish" is a surprisingly apt way to describe the result.

I think Y picks up some later on in the series [I've got the run in hardcover], but the first volume made me want to claw my eyes out. Problem is, Mr. Barnes, you're now Officially Too Fucking Old for this sort of book. It's clearly designed to be a college upper-classman humanities seminar discussion-starter. The whole spiel (grabbing the quote from Wikipedia now since I'm too lazy to go up and get my books to find it) about the "Y-chromosome 'rationally self-destructing for hundreds of millions of years'" is a club to the skull for the universally thick university boy and girl.

What's unfortunate is that, at our respective ages, we're still being targeted with this same fucking tale--only now it's being delivered via a barrage of dreadful business management and/or organizational efficiency books. I suspect they're actually being churned out by frustrated "graphic novelistas" who turned to an MBA or JD to make a living. At 40, I *still* prefer the pictures of ham-fisted comicbooks to the self-important, inane "decision flows" and "mind mappings" of business books trying to club me with the same tiresome message. ;-)

is there supposed to be a link to some other site (nohighscores maybe?) cos the review here, which I eagerly clicked on to hear your words consisted of 2 sentences, you like it, and its a ccg with a board.

ok i got it
would it really kill you to include a link in the actual article here?
http://www.nohighscores.com/2012/08/16/cracked-lcd-dungeon-command-in-review/

ps
thanks for the review :)

Am I the only one who thinks Dungeon Command sounds like Summoner Wars with minis?

Deathly Hallows 1 is probably my least favorite Harry Potter movie, mostly because it lacks any of the payoff that the second movie provides. I have yet to see them back-to-back, but I assume it'll probably really improve the first part. The second part is, as Jeff said, awesome.

I wish they had had the balls to just make it one movie. I'm with you, I've never cared much about what they leave out. They've been more concerned with being accurate than they were about making something that was a tight movie from day one, and the result is that a lot of the continuity is pretty slap-dash as you go through the series. They're generally very good, but I feel like they never really took off as something outside the scope of the books, rather than just adaptations. Lord of the Rings pulled that off, but Harry Potter did not.

Y the Last Man is an excellent comic. Vaughn took an odd idea and totally ran with it. It starts out somewhat familiar, a mixture of post-apocalyptic adventure and Vertigo comic sensibilities. It gets better and better. Sometime after the halfway point, I felt like Y lost some momentum, but then the last few issues stunned me like hammer blows. The final issue was amazing, with perfect cinematic transitions and a scene that made me actually cry. The ending was bold, and yet not shocking but instead an unusual ending that was perfectly in character for the protagonist.

Put it in perspective. Marvel and DC are mostly telling crappy stories today. They keep dragging out the never-ending stories of emotionally stunted super-freaks, with convoluted continuities and sprawling crossover events of momentary consequence. Y the Last Man has a beginning, a middle, and a end, like any good story. It also has complex, interesting, credible characters that have wild adventures and undergo actual character development. Ororo Monroe (aka Storm) is a bland cypher with nothing but striking looks and a super-power, but Agent 355 is has wit, style, and heart.

My girlfriend moved in with me five years ago. She had never been interested in comics before, but was curious about Y the Last Man. I told her a little bit about it, so she asked to read it. I handed her a stack of 56 issues, and she stayed up almost all night reading them. Then she was pissed because the story wasn't over yet. Unfortunately, there were a couple of production delays near the end of the series, so she had to wait nearly six months to read all of those last four issues. Since then, she has tried a few other comics, but nothing has impressed her like Y the Last Man.

Earlier this year, a teenage girl named Amina Fimali committed suicide in Morocco. She was raped last year, and her own family pressured her to marry the rapist to protect their honor. The rapist was also happy to marry her, because under Article 475 of the Moroccan penal code, he could avoid prosecution by marrying his victim. During the five months of the marriage, Amina was beaten repeatedly by her husband, but her mother told her to be patient. Amina finally decided to eat some rat poison instead. Of course, the United States is a much more enlightened place, where women can earn an average of 20% less for doing the same jobs as men. So, actually we do live in a world that is "this ridiculously over-the-top sexist place," and if a comic book can help raise awareness of some of these issues for even a few people, that's great.

Yes, because it's not. It's Magic with minis, really.

Maybe that's why we don't dig it...it's really Magic The Gathering of DDM.

On Dungeon Command- it's not really much like Summoner Wars other than grid-based tactical movement of summoned-to-the-playfield fantasy creatures. But the last time I checked, there's about 50,000 other games like that. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the designers had some time with Summoner Wars and had it in mind.

It is much closer to Magic, complete with tapping, enchantments, instants, and so forth. But the resource mechanic is totally different and it is very much a miniatures skirmish game, just driven by the cardplay.

On Y...let me put on my grapplin' gloves to grapple with Steve here...

It's not an odd idea. It's a pastiche of every postapocalypse concept out there. Like all postapocalypse fiction, there's a lack of a central element of everyday life. In Y, it's men. Effectively Y isn't much more than Planet of the Apes but with women in charge instead of apes. I'm not talking about particular events, situations or characters. Concepts.

The whole sexism angle is childish and obviously written from a man's perspective, which undermines everything the book is trying to convey as its Profound Message That Transcends the Comic Book Medium. Yes, sexism is prevalent and harmful in modern society. I AM NOT SURPRISED, nor do I need this book to hammer me over the head with it with hamfists. It dosen't "raise awareness" of how poorly women are treated, it trivializes it when characters literally can't have a conversation without some kind of overt sexism or talk about gender pops up. The whole book, at least what I've read, feels like it's written by that guy that goes to the feminist rally to show his solidarity...and pick up chicks.

As for the qualities you list in Y- complex characters, finite narratives, character development, wit, style, etc...come on man, it's 2012. That stuff isn't surprising in comics anymire.

As for lambasting Marvel and DC, they've ALWAYS been mostly telling crappy stories mostly due to the volume of content they produce. There's PLENTY of garbage comics from the Golden and Silver Ages and to suggest that either firm isn't more or less doing what they've ALWAYS done is kind of silly. SUre, there's the crossover crap and some definite Z-grade schlock. And yes, absolutely, they trot out a lot of the same storylines like the supers outlawed/turned on by the public/forced to register trope over and over again. And the ol' supers versus supers like the whole Avengers versus X-Men thing going right now that I really don't have any interest in.

But just as it always has been, great writers and artists are doing great things. If you're dismissing Marvel and DC out of hand because they're the majors and they mostly truck in superhero fare, you're flat out ignorant. There is some _amazing_ work going on in both companies right now, again just as there always has been. Those new Animal Man and Swamp Thing books stand up to _anything_ from Morrison or Moore.

I'd be curious to know what recent Marvel and DC books you've read that would suggest to you that these companies are somehow bankrupt of new ideas or storylines. If it's the big, stupid crossovers like Fear Itself or AvX I can see where you'd think that. But there's plenty more on offer that is most definitely worth reading.

I've been nibbling at the margins of the mainstream superhero fare from DC and Marvel in the last two years, to avoid getting sucked into the expensive crossover events. Especially the crossover events at Marvel, which often put the Avengers in the center of the story. Don't get me wrong, the Avengers have always been my favorite superhero team. It's just that Bendis isn't good at writing teams, because too many of his characters have identical voices that keep stammering like ninnies. Also, I bought a house less than a year ago, so I cut back on all my entertainment costs. And it turns out that owning a house seems to involve a lot of spending as well. I can't walk into Ace Hardware without spending at least $50 every time.

So when I do buy DC or Marvel superhero comics, I tend to enjoy them because I have been so picky while flipping through titles at the comic shop. I enjoyed Batman & Robin, the opening arc of Invincible Iron Man, Batwoman, Iron Fist, Agents of Atlas, Astonishing X-Men (up until a disappointing run by Warren Ellis), Doctor Strange: The Oath... I'm drawing a blank now, I'm certain that I was buying more DC, but offhand I can't remember what. JSA and Legion of Super-heroes, but they dropped a lot in quality towards the end.

If I were buying comics right now, I would definitely try Daredevil, Animal Man and Swamp Thing. And though it shames me to say it, I've been thinking about Uncanny Avengers, due to positive buzz about Remender and the ugly/pretty art of Cassaday. In general, I'm not happy with the execution of the DCnU, though I thought that the general idea was both good and necessary. But right now, the company that I work for has even less money than I do, and my next paycheck is either going to be late or non-existent. So I read trade paperback and hardcover comics at the library. That was an eye-opening experience to see how they sorted the comics. Much of the superhero comics, including nearly everything by Marvel, is in the teen section of the library. Everything else is in the adult section right next to the science-fiction aisle, and those comics are heavy on the Vertigo, Dark Horse, BOOM!, and more obscure titles, plus superhero comics by the better mainstream writers, like Rucka, Waid, Morrison, Moore, etc.

Yeah, I think you should definitely have a look at the Waid Daredevil...I think it would surprise you...I'd let you borrow the issues but that would mean I'd have to send you my iPad. :-P

The problem with recent Marvel, it seems, is Bendis. It's easy to get frustrated with so many books with...uh...I dunno...what? Huh. Oh yeah...Bendis...Bendis's name. On the book. The comic book. The comic book you're going to read. He does not get superhero teams at all.

But check out the Dan Abnett cosmic stuff, it's awesome. Especially Guardians of the Galaxy. Fraction's Iron Man is really good, but it is disappointing when it veers off into crossover-land. Uncanny X-Force is pretty awesome if you want to look into Remender, I liked the first TPB a lot.

Is that the same Dan Abnett that wrote a lot of the Warhammer 40K fiction? I quite liked those.

I did impulsively buy the first three issues of Abnett's Thanos Imperative. I've always been a Thanos fan, but it seems that only Jim Starlin understands the character. The artwork of The Thanos Imperative looked like a sub-par Heavy Metal story, but the real shame was the schlocky Cancerverse versions of the usual heroes, who came across as juvenile with their over-the-top EEEEVIL. And Thanos himself was reduced to a sketch of himself, almost mindlessly obsessed with death.

My problem with the DCnU is that they chose the wrong architects. Jim Lee is an extraordinarily over-rated artist who hasn't improved since his peak in the mid-'90s. He had editorial oversight of all the new costumes, and his sensibilities are stuck in that '90s Image style. And I was a big fan of Geoff Johns in the past, but he started to disappoint me regularly around the time of Infinite Crisis. He is clearly a big fan of the silver age DC heroes, but he wants to run them through shallow grim & gritty stories with a clockwork dramatic reveal at the end of each issue. Johns is very effective at moving characters from point A to point B with maximum drama, but that tactical focus isn't ideal for envisioning a fresh starting point. Too many of the younger heroes got get left out or mishandled, and practically the entire continuity of the Teen Titans is just gone. And yet Batman and Green Lantern supposedly got to keep all of their old continuity, despite drastic changes in their closest allies from the JLA.

Yup, one and the same.

*Sigh* What I probably don't need are more comics recommendations. I was a recovering comics guy with a couple thousand still in my parents' basement. (At least *I'm* not still there.) But the iPad has proved to be--for me, anyway--an almost ideal format for comic reading, and so after I got done with the not-so-great Jericho followup (which was more out of curiosity than anything else, as my fiancee and I had just finished watching what there was of the series on Netflix), I ended up getting all of Waid's Irredeemable when it went on sale and have been mostly enjoying that. So while I'm tempted to ask for additional recommendations, I think y'all have sunk me with the ones you've already listed here and elsewhere.

jpat, if you're reading Irredeemable, you simply must try the companion title, Incorruptible. It's the opposite character arc, but fun: when the Plutonian turned evil, one of his arch-enemies decides to become a hero. Only it's not easy to become a hero when your sidekick is your underage thrill-seeking girlfriend who actually calls herself Jailbait. Or when you are globally infamous for some pretty nasty crimes. And yet, Max Damage is now a hero, and a scary one at that.

Yes, the iPad is PERFECT for comics, even with the screen being smaller than the page. The convenience is just obnoxious. It may sound trite, but the fact that I can read with the lights out is awesome. Let alone that I've got 300+ issues on there at my beck and call. And can...*sigh* buy more at the touch of a screen.

A bunch of Nightwing stuff is on sale today...I've never read a single page of a Teen Titans book, picked up the Judas Project storyline for $4.

If you like Waid, you're in good company, there's some fans here. Again, read his recent Daredevil work. It's wonderful.

I believe Thanos Imperative is sort of the end of Guardians of the Galaxy, if I'm not mistaken.GoG got cancelled and that was sort of the endcap.

But yeah, it's 40k Dan Abnett. The stuff is good, but it does get caught up in crossover mania. Annihilation, which was going on at the same time as Civil War, is at least manageable and it sticks mostly to the Cosmic books. Both Nova and Guarians have been on sale recently so you missed out. :-P

This should be pretty much the bare minimum. The fact that lots of comics do not even come close to meeting this bare minimum is no reason to exalt the comics that do nothing that a random movie or TV series doesn't already.

Barnes also hit the nail on the head that saying that Marvel & DC are telling crappy stories today is really nothing new, ever. That's how it's been since 1938. The unusual thing is when every once in a while, a writer or an artist is allowed to be themselves a little and do something unusual, and even more unusual is when they are allowed to do this and actually have SKILLS, and then you get some awesome stuff. Sometimes.

I would estimate, though, that there *were* a few years at Marvel in the early 60s where 80% of what they were doing was high quality, thanks to it all being done by basically three people. DC was much bigger and more varied so it's harder for me to get my head around, but I think there might have been a point around the same time where they had a pretty killer lineup as well. But I'm definitely mostly talking about art here, there has never been a point in the history of comics where Marvel or DC have had more than 10% of their books having really high-quality writing. You just remember them as "they used to be better!", because you were a kid/teenager before, and you had lower standards, or you were just reading the good stuff.

I know this is going to sound like terrible heresy, especially from a life-long comic book fan like myself, but I've never really enjoyed any Marvel comics from before the late '60s. Yeah, yeah, Lee, Kirby and Ditko are all legends, but damn their stuff was crude back then. They had great ideas, but the execution was weak... except in comparison to almost anything else that had ever been done in comics up to that point. Fortunately, those ideas were robust and formed a solid foundation for everything that came later. Fantastic Four was especially important. During the first 100 issues, Lee and Kirby developed major chunks of the Marvel Universe. In part, that's why Fantastic Four has been so marginal in the last 20 years (except maybe the recent Hickman run), because most subsequent creators didn't have the vast creative powers of the Kirby-Lee team.

Not heresy at all! Those guys and their comics are acquired tastes, for sure. Neither Eisner nor Spiegelman liked Kirby's art (though I think Eisner came around eventually). I could see calling the artists "crude", even, because that's part of their charm: the art is raw and very personal. Even at the time, DC was considered the house with the polished, beautiful art, and Marvel was considered the house with the crude but energetic work. Ditko's art in particular is almost *never* classically beautiful (though "beauty" in superhero comics art is pretty rare anyway); his people are UGLY, and like to be in weird twisted poses!

And the stories are simple. Arguably, however, that befits the genre, but there are some that I have a hard time reading (Dr. Strange ggghhhhh and early Thor). If you want to see VERY ambitious stories and themes by the same artist, check out Kirby's Fourth World, now in very well-priced paperback omnibi; but if you dislike Kirby's art, it's not going to convince you.

I am genuinely curious, though, as to who or what storyline utilized any of the bajillion characters from Fantastic Four better than the original run; those specifically strike me as characters that everyone acknowledges as being awesome but have never actually been awesome since. The other stuff, like the X-Men or Avengers stuff, sure, I could see arguments made for better comics having been made from those characters. But with the FF, no one's really gotten those characters, I think (I know some like Byrne's run and Waid's run), not even the villains. When I was reading that Mark Waid Daredevil with Klaw, I got a strong feeling of "I LOVE this villain! I have no idea what to do with him!", though I really like what he's doing with Daredevil himself.

I would go so far as to argue that Fantastic Four is probably the _only_ still-running, still active book that didn't get _better_ over time. Every FF book I've read other than that original material has been marginal. The Hickman stuff I've looked at was fun and cute, but it is definitely standing on the shoulders of giants.

I don't think it's heresy at all to call the late Golden/early Silver stuff crude. It was. You've got to look at it in context, which can be kind of hard because I think some of it is actually difficult to read now. When I read through the Kree-Skrull War books a couple of months ago, what was most suprising was how BAD a lot of it was. There were pages and pages where I was just like "damn, this is supposed to be good?" But then there would be some really brilliant concepts or panels and I'd be like "Oh, OK, this is why this matters". Not to mention that some of that stuff still turns up even today in the Marvel cosmic books.

So it is best to read that stuff as foundational, almost more from an appreciation perspective than an "I want to read a great comic book story" one. Not that there weren't some great stories, but comparing something like those early X-Men books to Morrison's New X-Men is like comparing an early silent film to a modern action picture. You're looking at a pioneering and innovating work, not a fully developed or even necessarily timeless one.

This is why things like origin stories and even story arcs get told and retold, and why it's important that they do so that they can remain modern. But the influences of Kirby, Lee, et. al. can't be understated.

Good points, especially regarding the Fantastic Four. I feel like the next 100 or so issues after Kirby left were still intermittently very good, especially the really fun Wolfman/Perez run. Byrne's FF run was good in the same way that the Busiek/Perez Avengers run was good, it was good cover versions of songs by your favorite band.

I don't hate Kirby, Lee or Ditko. Kirby had certain strengths, like impressive, bulky musculature or big weird machines and that "Kirby crackle" energy. And some of his costume designs were great. Enchanteress had a great outfit, and somehow Kirby made that bizarre Thor costume work well. I love Hellboy, and Mike Mignola's artwork is heavily influenced by Kirby though not quite as good. Ditko had this whole lively visual language of odd poses and gestures, and I sometimes loved his depictions of magic in Strange Tales. Marcos Martin did an amazing job of imitating Ditko's style a few years ago for The Oath. And while Stan Lee's hype and alliteration were sometimes overwhelming, his notion of flawed and even handicapped heroes was a brilliant innovation for comics.

I'd add Spider-Man to that admittedly very small list. I know some people love the Romita Spider-Man, but even then: I don't think there were *any* great runs after that. I think Untold Tales of Spider-Man is probably the best Spider-Man comic since the 60s, and even then it's SO connected to the old Ditko run. (Don't get me started on Ultimate Spider-Man, but I guess that's the counterexample some would use). I mean, Spider-Man's easily my favorite superhero, I have a longbox full of shitty Spider-Man comics as a kid, but that's exactly what they were, shitty. For an all-time great superhero, he's had shockingly few great comics. Any great Spidey runs I'm forgetting?

ROM Spaceknight was a remarkable comic, despite it being what amounts to a sales tool for a toy. I wish I still had them all.

I like Y. Haters.

"come on man, it's 2012": Yeah, but Y wasn't written in 2012. It's started in 2002, it's a decade old. I do agree that written by a man doesn't make the female characters or female-centric characters feel authentic. I don't believe that many women would switch to being lesbians or sleep with prostitutes with fake beards.

"Whaddya do?" quote from your Dungeon Command review: You cut Wizards a lot of slack for their kooky marketing schemes than you would FFG.

Deathly Hallows pt 2 was a total let down from the great set up. So little of it felt really epic or powerful. The last battle was super super lame too.

Matt Loter channels his inner hipster once again as he tries to tear down something that was really great. Look dude, just because a lot of people liked it doesn't necessarily mean you can't like it too.

Deathly Hallows 2 was epic, powerful and the best of all the Potter movies.

No fucking way! The wizard battles down in that HQ place a few movies earlier when the bad dudes all fight the good dudes were lightyears better than the boring bullshit in the last movie. I was really stoked on them all up until that point, but it just felt totally weak. All this build up and the final battle with Harry takes like 2 minutes and is totally boring. I wanna see dudes blasting shit all over the place and spells flying wild while they zoom around, this was not that. Weakest movie of the whole series and it should have been the best.

Also, don't get the hipster thing? Lots of other people thought it was a letdown in the same way too. In fact, I'm kinda shocked by how many people on here are all boners for it as I figured it was kinda accepted fact that it was a weak ending to the series.

PS: I'm still drunk!

This is exactly why I won't be buying much more on the iDevice (iPhone for me). I finished reading Irredeemable and I immediately wanted to loan it to my friends so we could share the experience.
I'm too much of a fora lurker maybe, but that won't change any time soon.

I just watched Deathly Hallows 2, I'll comment more thursday. But Matt's wrong. I mean, when Neville Longbottom gets an Epic Moment...

"Whaddya do?" quote from your Dungeon Command review: You cut Wizards a lot of slack for their kooky marketing schemes than you would FFG.

I commented on this over there ("Bullshit" sayeth Sevej in response)...but there is, I think, a difference. Wizards went with a pretty standard miniatures game marketing approach (one player buys one faction) but the product isn't really appropriate for that since it is also a board game. And I do think that it's very different than the LCG model, where there are instances of incompletion built into the "core set" that hook the consumer in for future purchases. Maybe two factions are short-counted or there's purposefully not enough of a particular card. Or there's a keyword or ability that is referenced that isn't on anything in the box. Dungeon Command, for better or worse, is complete out of the box, you just have to buy two boxes to get the whole thing.

Maybe I am cutting them a little more slack...but that could be because I expect better out of FFG than I do from a company owned and managed by Hasbro.

I mean, Spider-Man's easily my favorite superhero, I have a longbox full of shitty Spider-Man comics as a kid, but that's exactly what they were, shitty. For an all-time great superhero, he's had shockingly few great comics. Any great Spidey runs I'm forgetting?

I've come to the realization that Spider-Man comics, outside of the original 1960s material, suck. I've tried to read Spider-Man off and on over the years (most recently the god-awful Dan Slott stuff) and I've never really liked _any_ of it. Even the "best" stories- Death of Gwen Stacy, Kraven's Last Hunt, etc...boring. I thought Ultimate Spider-Man was fun for the first dozen issues, but then I never wanted to see it again.

The problem is that the Spider-Man idea is really pretty limited, and it's more suited to that 1960s style of comics storytelling than the more modern modes. Don't get me wrong, that original stuff is awesome- which is why it's all been told and retold time and time again. And I do like Spider-Man as a character. I _love_ the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon. But I have zero desire to read any Spider-Man book again. So yes, along with Fantastic Four, it's another book that didn't get better over time.

I continued to enjoy Spider-man for a while into the '70s. There was a very dark era around the time when Gwen Stacy died, but that mitigated by awesome moments like Luke Cage stuffing a thick wad of cash into J. Jonah Jameson's mouth a few issues later. And there were some decent issues early in the Spectacular Spider-man comic, including some early Frank Miller work and several team-ups with the White Tiger from Marvel's black-and-white Deadly Hands of Kung Fu. Kraven's Last Hunt was the end of the line for me. I thought it was a decent story (though with a couple of inexplicable plot points), but somehow it felt like the end of an era, because I finally realized that Spider-man was going to go downhill from there.

Spider-man has definitely reached a point where his story should have ended, and most of what we will get from now on will be re-hashed minor variations on the early classic stories. There are a few long-running characters that have such solid fundamentals that they continue to attract talented creators (especially Batman and Superman), but for the most part, DC and Marvel would have been better off letting these characters continue to age. That would have continued to create interesting potential situations for the classic heroes as they went through real, enduring changes in their lives. And it would have encouraged DC and Marvel to develop new heroes or at least decent legacy heroes along the way, creating more of a rich tapestry of continuity instead of all the tedious reboots and retcons. Every generation of new comic book fans should have their own heroes to latch on to, and they shouldn't be stuck reading the adventures of characters that outstayed their welcome by decades.

It's Spider-Man's 50th birthday this year, so there've been some good essays posted online about Spider-Man. A couple essays have pointed out that, unlike almost all ongoing superhero comics, and especially those in the 1960s and earlier, Spider-Man actually had a character arc and a kind of ending, even, in the original Ditko run; had the series ended with the "If This Be My Destiny!" story, it would have seemed like an entirely appropriate ending. Irresponsible teenager gets powers, and over the next 30-ish issues slowly overcomes self-doubt and becomes a responsible adult as he graduates from high school, encountering all kinds of mirror-images of himself along the way; after his irresponsibility gets his uncle killed at the beginning of the story, he has a last chance to save his aunt, and marshals all his strength and willpower to do so and finally redeem his earlier mistake.

I've personally always felt that Spider-Man really only works when he's a high-school student (hence my love for Untold Tales of Spider-Man); getting married really clashes with the whole concept in my mind. But I'm very very biased and very very irrationally attached to the Ditko issues because they were ridiculously important to me as a kid; even the well-respected Romita Sr. run afterwards just pisses me off.

Interesting idea! But as you hint at, clinging desperately to their old characters is kind of their M.O. There have been tons of attempts to make new characters, they just MOSTLY haven't stuck; if they had let their old characters age and die off, there'd be barely any good characters left. Of course, it's a vicious cycle, as talented creators are pretty much discouraged from creating their own characters, so maaaaaaaybe we'd have seen more good characters if there wasn't this push to work on old characters. Or maybe they'd have taken more risks with hiring distinctive and weird creators; they'd HAVE to take more risks to generate new characters. It almost goes without saying, but as we just talked about with Fantastic Four and Spider-Man: it's not the marquee characters that got the really great runs later; it's the characters like Daredevil and Swamp Thing and Animal Man and Thor and X-Men, that were selling terribly and no one gave a shit about, so they were willing to take the risk of allowing a totally different take on them by a more experimental writer/artist. And now they're marquees because of it.