What If...?

[-K-M-]

100% agree. Even DC is a terrible mess since convergence

[Tawmis]

100% agree. Even DC is a terrible mess since convergence

This breaks my heart so much. Because I was never a big DC fan. Used to hate Superman and Batman comics, because it seemed like every story, they were just impossible to beat, to the point that it was ridiculous. Even Captain America gets his @$$ handed to him - quite frequently. Granted, Superman "died" (gimmick) and Batman eventually got his back broken.

But New 52 was where I set all of my preconceived notions aside, and said, "I am going to give every book a try!" And I literally collected just about every New 52 - even if it was full of characters I never heard of (Justice League International, for example; Katana, Vibe, etc). And I really, really liked the New 52. It felt like "classic" super hero comics to me. Good guys fighting bad guys. No over the top drama and dialogue bubbles covering everything (I love dialogue, but a lot of writers go WAY overboard and forget they're telling a story in a comic, not a novel).

Then Convergence happened. And my collecting dropped in DC to barely anything. Marvel, even less.

To me, any death counts if the reader is expected to believe it. Especially if the writer meant it at the time!
I think the same about Jean.

Agreed; because the writer planned that character's death. Some other writer then come along and say, "He teleported away at the right time, and has just been missing for 10 years" or "It was actually a clone by Government Agency X!"

Since how long? It's an interesting question, I think:
For me, it's since the '90s; others would probably say more recently. Others might say we're on the upswing. Others say since the '80s.
That said, there are still things out there that are good.

For me it was definitely the 90's. While it had some great comics out there - that I think are absolutely ground breaking in terms of story telling (New Warriors under Fabian) - the 90's was also the time that it felt like comics shifted from being about the story to being about the art. And we saw a rise in folks like Marc Silvestri (whose art I absolutely love), Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee (and basically everyone who would eventually go on to make IMAGE which also boomed in the 90's - and cemented the "art over the story" vibe). Because I love me some WildCATS and CyberForce - but re-reading those, you can tell the story telling is very weak, but the art was fantastic. And with IMAGE's rise in popularity back then, I think the Big Two shifted that way. Avengers and X-Men, both staple books for me, back then, became very blah.