Whatever happened to...

[anarky]

Okay, I'm looking more at storytelling conventions that seem to have fallen by the wayside in recent years, though characters or creators would be fine, too, I suppose.

Whatever happened to...

• Secret identities, or civilian life? It looks like the stories with "downtime" are few and far between.
• Stand-alone issues? This one speaks for itself.
• Miniseries that did not exist solely to be part of an epic crossover?
• Animal-themed villains? Goofy as they are, with more and more exotic animals being well-known (as well as new animals being discovered), this looks like a pretty fertile minefield.
• Thought balloons? True, they were often overused as crutches, but I'm not sure they need to be totally taken out of the toolbox because of that.
• Editorial notes? Especially the good old "They last fought in #67." I've seen them in the revived Hama GIJoe, but I think it's more an attempt to make them look like 20-year-old comics.

[Rollo Tomassi]

I also lament the lapse of 'Secret Identities' and civilian problems. Cap, IronMan, Daredevil, Hulk have all gone public just to name a few, and everybody else, SHIELD seems to have a file on them anyway. But you should check out Dan Slott's current Amazing Spidey. He's all about Pete's civilian woes.

I know you know this already, and that question was rhetorical, but its all about the TPB these days. So every story needs to be six issues long that it may be released down the road and they make their money twice. Ocassionally you get a 'done in one' issue, but they're rare and don't seem as 'full' as comics of yesteryear.

I think they are putting out more miniseries than ever actually. And not all are Event tie-ins. A few are yes, but not all. And a lot of those tie-in series are ancilliary and don't have much to do with the Event, but they slap the logo on there to sell issues.

Most of the cool names are taken. And those that aren't, well, writers don't like to create new characters for the Big 2 anymore. If they have a cool idea, they're more likely to turn it into a creator owned project. So they just recycle the characters the Big 2 already have with 'Legacy' characters. That's why there's no cool badguy called the Osprey, but we have a Lady Bullseye.

Thought balloons got replaced with Captions after Frank Miller did it with DKR. Most thought balloons were clumsy exposition delivery devices and writers have upped their game since then. Bendis brought them back for a short while in Mighty Avengers a few years ago.

I can't say why editor's notes have gone away. Since continuity porn storytelling is rampantly off the charts these days, you'd think it would be more prolific than ever. I guess they assume everybody has access to google and wikipedia and can find out what happened where for themselves? I dunno. I miss them too.

[Diabolical]

The Batman Retroactive titles (and I'm assume the other ones too) had thought bubbles, editorial notes and animal villains.
They were all stand-alone issues and had a bit of the secret identity thing going on.
And I guess you could consider all three of those a sort of mini-series.

[anarky]

I don't mind the occasional storyline that's paperback-length. But every story doesn't need to be that way, and decompression to force them to be results in weak stories. And doing nothing but consecutive paperback-length stories over and over, well, I'd think it actually hurts paperback sales.

Consider this example I'm using because it's a series I'm familiar with and am currently re-reading: GIJoe was anything but a "paperback-length story" title. So imagine someone has heard great things about the Battle of Benzheen and wants to learn how Quick-Kick died. So he gets Volume 12. But that's not a self-contained story, so he's got to get Volume 11 for the issues leading into it, and Volume 13 for the conclusion to the beginning of the Headman story that ends that book. Before you know it, he's got the whole series. You've got "Panic at the North Pole" in a single issue, or the long-running subplot about Ripcord and Zartan over, what, twelve issues?

I know the paperback-length stories have some dangling ends, so to speak, but they don't usually feel as serialized as comics that vary in the length of stories more. I dunno; a paperback is a paperback whether it has five consecutive issues because they're consecutive or those five issues form one story.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Following the idea of Editors Notes, I realized from reading a bunch of comics from the 80s and 90s that Letters Pages were also instrumental in fostering readers' interests in locating back issues. Think about it. You had just finished reading an issue of Spider-Man, or X-Men, or GIJoe or whatever. And at the end of the issue, a bunch of readers were commenting and discussing the issue from 4 months ago. Since most stories were done in one, you wanted to find that issue and see what they were excited about. And then that issue would have a letters page, etc etc.

[Tom Foolery]

Something I noticed a couple weeks ago while reading some early 80s issues of Infinity Inc. Writer Roy Thomas was his own editor on the series. And then I thought and realized Gerry Conway and Marv Wolfman were their own editors on Firestorm and New Teen Titans respectively. Then I started thinking about how many of the Editors from the 60s thru the early 90s were culled from the ranks of writers and vice versa. Mark Gruenwald, Louise Simonson, etc etc hell even Bob Harras. And even editors who didn't still had the occasional writing credit. Seriously, go look at any staffer back then and they have SOME writing credit. It seemed like a nobrainer that editors should have some experience formulating a story and getting it published. Writers and editors were almost swappable positions.
If you look back, every Marvel EiC was also a writer. Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Len Wein, Archie Goodwin, Jim Shooter, Tom DeFalco, Bob Harras, Joe Quesada.
But Axel Alonso isnt a writer. Neither are most of Marvel's senior editor staff. Steve Wacker, Nick Lowe. Brevoort might have written a few things. I doubt most of the associate and assistant editors have any writing credits as well. I have no idea about DC, but it sounds like the same case over there(apart from the Geoff Johns and Jim Lees and Didios).
So, when did editors become NOT-writers?

It's obvious this development has become detrimental to the overall quality of the Big 2, but how, when, and why did it happen?

Discuss.

[anarky]

How could you of all people forget two of Marvel's best writer/editors, Bob Budiansky and Larry Hama?

[Tom Foolery]

I didn't forget them. I just didn't feel like listing every damn person who both wrote and edited at Marvel. There's dozens I didn't mention.

[Tom Foolery]

I’m hijacking this topic just because the Title of it works perfectly with what I’m gonna use it for. Marvel has thrown a lot of ideas out there. A few of them stick, but ten times as many fall by the wayside when the writer who came up with them leaves the book. Or they become outdated. Time for a game of nostalgia…

Whatever happened to…

Code:Blue? Supporting characters in Thor’s book written by Tom DeFalco( a lot of these are from Defalco’s imagination. Just forewarning) they were a special unit of the NYPD to deal with superhumans. Even though the entire team were regular people with just a plucky attitude and nothing whatsoever to back it up if actual super humans were involved.

Hardcase and the Harriers? Claremont had a team of ex-military and/or SHIELD Agents who went mercenary and crossed paths with Wolverine and occasionally the X-Men. Claremont went to a lot of trouble giving a dozen characters names, codenames, and backstories for the amount of page time they received.

SHIELD Super Agents? Before they just farmed out the concept to the Avengers, SHIELD had an actual roster of superhuman on the payroll. The first iteration had Quasar and Texas Twister on the team in an old Capt America book. But I can think of at least three other versions of the idea. One was from Nick Fury’s late 80s/early 90s book. One was in early(ish) issues of Thunderbolts. And one was from the cyberpunk Deathlok series from 2000 or so.

Earth Force? Another DeFalco gem from his Thor run. Three normal people got nature based powers from the Egyptian god Seth. One was Water, one Earth, and one Wind. They went on to briefly be super heroes. And by briefly, I mean briefly.

I will post more as I think of them. Feel free to do the same.

[Tom Foolery]

Whatever happened to…

The V-Battalion? A bunch of elderly Golden Age super heroes and/or their kids and grandkids who had formed a super secret society primarily devoted to hunting down Nazi war criminals. Featured in Busiek’s Thunderbolts run, and even had a couple of their own minis. Then..fwoosh. Never heard from again. Plenty of Nazis still in the world though.

The New Immortals? Another of DeFalco’s ideas from his Thor run. The High Evolutionary stole some of Thor’s hair from his comb or something, and made a half dozen new gods. They popped in and out of Thor’s life a few times, then….

Thor-Girl? From Dan Jurgens run on the book. A teenage girl with her own Hammer. Was she like an alternate future timeline’s daughter or sister or cousin or something? I can’t remember. The last time I vaguely remember her was post-Civil War she was in one of the 50-State Initiative teams.

[Tom Foolery]

Whatever happened to…

The Man on the Wall? At some point, it was revealed that the OG Nick Fury, in addition to running SHIELD, had also been tasked by some old Russian geezer who was dying to be this super top secret sort of Interdimensional Safeguard for Earth. When he got killed/turned into the creepy Watcher-esque dude during Original Sin, he passed the job and title to Bucky Barnes aka The Winter Soldier. And Bucky took the job seriously for about a dozen issues.
I haven’t heard mention of it since.

Landau, Luckman, & Lake? The mysterious law firm/interdimensional…also law firm(??) They’d pop up whenever Logan’s past needed to be even more convoluted and mysterious. And they’d be all ‘thanks for doing the thing in the place that one time’ and Patch’s allies would be ‘what’s that all about’ and Logan would be ‘never you mind…’ and then everybody would just drop it until they showed up in a completely unrelated arc pulling the same shit.

[Tom Foolery]

Whatever happened to…

Marvelman/Miracleman? Marvel bought the rights back in 2009? 2010? Apart from reprinting the classic 50s stories in TPBs, and the 80s reboot in three ongoings, with only the most recent one having any new material, they’ve spent 15 years doing jack shit with the property. They’ve teased bringing him into the main Marvel continuity a couple times. Never mind how wretched that idea seems when you really think about the character. They’ll either have to change him so much it’ll basically be a new character and MM in name only, or they’ll criminally underutilize him. The guy is a walking deus ex machina, and they’ve got hundreds of them already.