How Tight is Marvel ?

[DelBubs]

One of the first things that drew me to Marvel was the fact that no matter what was happening, every one seemed to be in step with everyone else. Example being Secret Wars 1. All the monthly titles came to the same place at the same time. Spiderman, FF, Avengers, X-Men all went to the construct in the park at around the same time in regards to monthly titles. Now that tightness doesn't seem to be there.

Wolverine is the classic example, appearing in numerous different titles per month,, most people seemed to just let it go, saying yeah whatever, but now it seems to be spreading. The FF have been split asunder, but we have Onslaught Reborn #1 on the shelves and lo and behold they're all jolly good friends. X-Men are off fighting Civil War in some underground bunker, while at the same time the Cuckoo's are running rampant and Northstar and Auroira are attacking. Spiderman doesn't seem to know where he's suppose to be, fighting three Mysterio's one minute, getting beat up by Iron Man the next and going to discuss stuff said about him in a book two secs later. I could go on, as this seem to be quite prevelent throughout Marvel at the moment. I'm getting bloody confused and to the point where I'm beginning to wonder why I'm bothering. I'm not sure if Civil War is playing a role in this ridiculous state of affairs (oh I was gonna mention 'Beyond', which exacerbates this, but ...) or whether Marvel are over stretching themselves.

One of the things that kept me away from the Distinguished Competition was the fact I really couldn't be arsed trying to keep up with Batman doing 95 different things at the same time, unfortunately what I thought made Marvel better, no longer seems to be really the case?

Just saying, tha'sall.

[Ottawa Renegade]

I am a far bigger fan of DC Comics than Marvel, and I know someone who's the exact opposite. He made a comment the other day about how fond DC is of canceling a series to re-launch and listed a couple of examples, to which I pointed out where Marvel had done the very same.

When I knocked Marvel for always trying to give some of their C-List characters push after push after push, he countered with DC examples of the same thing.

What you refer to is similar. Hasn't Spider-Man had about four series going on simultaneously for years? I'm sure he's been about the same as Batman.

Bottom line: they both suck. :wink:

[DelBubs]

I use to really dislike Spider Man, but have got to admit since Civil War started, I've found a something about the character I like. However I'm now wavering in regards to Marvel due to this feeling that anything I read is gonna be contradicted or the impact lessened due to this need to churn out x amount of limiteds every month.

I think maybe I should just cut back on the amount of books I'm getting each month so this trend doesn't seem so obvious to me :-)

[Canucklehead]

You know what, you're right and the company could do more to focus in on that stuff, but the bottom line is the writers are just given free reign these days and many can't be bothered to do some research. Peter David's FN Spider-Man, however, can fit everything within CW, AMZ and it's own title without much effort and still have room for 2 or 3 of his own subplots, which creates a great comic worth the price. So yes the "Big 2" let their characters run amuck, but the writers can solve this if they want to.

[Banshee]

I think this thread makes a valid point. It was always Marvels strength that there was good continuity. Avengers in their own books who had hassle, where explained not to be available for duty in the team book, Beast could cross over to X-Men and current X-Men continuity would be in line with Avengers. A good example is Avengers 233 crossing over with FF 256/257 and Alpha Flight 4 crossing over with FF 260(ish).

Gone, all gone!!