The Four Color Media Monitor

A writer for ICV2 (via The Beat blog) talks about how Marvel's villains have become almost completely absent lately. He also argues that comics of recent have become far too bleak:

Since Civil War started, the Marvel Universe has been all about the heroes fighting the heroes. I've honestly forgotten about villains these days. Think about it. Who's the first "villain" to be introduced in the new Thor series? Iron Man. Wow, what does that say? And we were all overjoyed to see Thor kick his butt. But honestly, I'd rather my heroes were a bit... I don't know... heroic.

What's our current epic storyline? World War Hulk, in which the Hulk (one of our favorite heroes) crushes all the other heroes who may have killed a whole lot of people, including the Hulk's baby. Wow, that's uplifting! Where are the villains? Oh, that's easy, they're all villains. And what's the next major storyline we can expect? Secret Invasion, in which we will find out which of our heroes.... are not heroes.

[...]

I'm all for realistic, dramatic books, to a point. It seems that the current Marvel Universe is bogged down in some weird Orwellian dark age where the heroes aren't heroes, and the villains just aren't important. And personally, it seems that people are quickly losing interest, especially with the books that are potentially moving us away from this condition being plagued by continued lateness. Sure there are some good books out there, but the comic world in general right now just seems to be a darker place than usual.

That pretty much makes the point even I once thought to make, that, if I don't read DC Comics for utter bleakness, then I don't read Marvel Comics for that kind of thing either. For both universes, it's just simply unhealthy to wallow in an overdose of darkness all the time.

And making the heroes into the regular villains instead of the actual villains themselves, now that just plain stinks.

Labels: marvel comics