The Four Color Media Monitor

The always incredibly biased Polygon paid lip service to Marvel's event from 2012, which reused the title of the 1984 company wide crossover that started the industry on a long term drop in quality as the years went by, and crossovers became far too numerous, and less thoughtful:

Last summer, House of X/Powers of X, a galaxy brain sci-fi superhero series from writer Jonathan Hickman and numerous collaborators, rocked the comics world. But before Hickman did that, he told a three-year story about Marvel’s greatest heroes compromising their morality to save the universe — and failing anyway. Secret Wars was about what happened next.

Some months ago I decided to read Hickman’s older Marvel work, starting with his run on the Fantastic Four, which bleeds into his Avengers series. The project set me on a riveting path to Secret Wars, and it’s where you should go, too.

Nuh-uh. We've all been ripped off more than enough times by these expensive crossovers that take up too much in company finances and less every year in audience consumption, to say nothing of taking steering superhero comics away from stand-alone storytelling and chances at more plausible character development. Jim Shooter's concept, originally meant to promote a toy line that never got anywhere, did long term damage to mainstream superhero fare, and it's time to avoid company wide crossovers already.

And here's where you know the columnist is going by a bias:

This is a big improvement on Marvel’s original Secret Wars event, which was called “Secret Wars” because of an edict from Mattel, which had found that those words focus tested well with children who bought action figures.

Oh, do tell us about it. One silver lining about the original SW is that, unlike most of today's crossovers, including this new one using the same title, it at least wasn't built on over-the-top notions of characters dying for the sake of shock. While the original Crisis on Infinite Earths in turn had the saving grace of at least depicting a few of its heroes dying heroically, not unlike later variations which had heroes and other co-stars either being killed or turned into villains for shock's sake, and all the while becoming more pointless, and even potentially political. Oh, and here's where they get around to citing the influences for the Endgame movie:

T’Challa gets so much delicious character exploration in the lead up to Secret War — and it’s clear that the folks behind Marvel’s Black Panther film were mining the series for their own take. The Black Panther grapples heavily with balancing superheroic moral choices (like “Killing is wrong”) with his obligations as absolute ruler and protector of Wakanda.

Also, Hickman wrote that “Every breath you take is a mercy from me” line that shows up in the movie, which happens when T’Challa finally got sick of Namor’s bullshit.

See, again, that's the irritating thing about the approach taken to producing the movies, which have slowly been earning some criticism starting from filmmakers like Scorsese. They draw from the most recent comics, and come to think of it, basing as many lines and scenes as possible on what you see in the comics - rather than just rely on your own ideas for what makes great dialogue and scenes - is laughably cheap. Right down to the cliche about killing being wrong instead of murder itself, and/or self-defense.

Secret Wars #1 begins with the end of everything. Thanks to incursions, the only parallel Earths left in existence are the main Marvel continuity, and Earth-1610, home dimension of Miles Morales. In a few hours, the universe will cease to exist, and everyone on both Earths knows it. When Hickman and artist Esad Ribic show you New York City’s villains celebrating the fall of their enemies, it seems like one more tragic scene — until the Punisher shows up to celebrate in his own way.

Ah, yes, it served as an excuse for merging Miles Morales with the 616 universe proper. Though he didn't end up replacing Peter Parker as Axel Alonso's bunch went out of their way to do with Thor and Captain America, his presence in the original MCU became a pointless excuse for the diversity cliche, bearing even less meaning than Billy Batson's merging with the DCU proper. And, as also noted, the crossover became an excuse to have Frank Castle engage in over-the-top blasting. I'm also wondering why parallel worlds have to be wiped out, when, much like the Negative Zone, they can serve to build great adventures around, for the heroes to travel to, where they find villains menacing them and need to save the innocents of the alternate dimensions. Instead, we have a problem today with writers who just come up with plots to destroy these parallel dimensions and limit focus to little more than one.

Comic book resurrections and returns to the status quo can be tiring. But there are benefits to the trope being so well understood, should writers and artists choose to capitalize on them. When everything’s going to be reset, you can have some fun with the Punisher. You can pull out all the stops.

You can embody the Phoenix Force within a radicalized Cyclops, or give Doctor Doom the power of every Beyonder. You can make a kaiju-sized Ben Grimm, and let him finally punch Galactus in the face, just like he’s always wanted.

No kidding. Does that mean gory violence is also inherently valid? Let's be clear. I do like the Punisher as a concept, and think it's a shame his own creator, Gerry Conway, now all but rejects him, but putting him in the middle of a shock value crossover doesn't do justice for Frank Castle. It reduces him to a cheap plot device at worst. As does turning Cyclops into a male Phoenix?!? Ugh. That too was just another boomerang back to an overused idea that grew stale long ago, and unbearable. As it so happens, resurrections and status quo restorations aren't tiring. Rather, it's shock value that is. But if this crossover only existed as an excuse to have the Punisher go on a slaughter rampage, all because they intended to reverse part of the situation later, that's exactly why this whole story is ludicrous, pathetic shock value.

Secret Wars is the rare event that delivers on what it promises, with emotional stakes, coherent storytelling, dire consequences, epic scale — even a happy ending. And just like Avengers: Endgame, it had the job of saying goodbye to some beloved heroes.

Really? In that case, what's so happy about the ending if a number of heroes go down in flames? Why should we even take these clowns' words at face value, that the tale is "emotional", "coherent", let alone "epic"? That all ran dry long ago. I don't take these phonies at face value, and their failure to acknowledge crossovers have gone too far, become too financially consuming and the industry desperately needs to wean off them, is precisely what's wrong with their approach.

Above all, this is exactly why, if I were the kind of movie attendant they're catering their films to, I'd be perplexed and embarrassed if I discovered their movies were drawing from such shoddy crossovers. As though it weren't bad enough these tentpole films have been taking away finance and audience from lower budgeted movies that could actually have a script that makes you think.

Labels: Avengers, crossoverloading, dreadful writers, golden calf of death, marvel comics, msm propaganda, violence