The Four Color Media Monitor

The Tifton Gazette's published a fluff-coated column about Jed MacKay's Avengers run, and begins by telling that it:

Seems like there’s a new Avengers title every six months or a new reboot of the main Avengers every few years.

It seems that way because it is that way. and every six months is generous. It’s likely closer to every other month for a new title.

Well isn't that a bad thing in the long run? You have to wonder, in that case, why Marvel/DC don't just format and market these as miniseries, or make the shift to paperback only. The pamphlet format's long become an embarrassment over the past 20 years. And all the while, these press sources won't argue whether they should abandon it for paperback/hardcover instead.

As for the main title, “The Avengers” No. 1 was released this past week ... again, starting the story arc featuring the creative team of Jed MacKay, C.F. Villa and Federico Blee.

“Reboot” is technically the wrong word. Marvel Comics – the comic books – doesn’t reboot its characters and storylines in the traditional sense. Everything is a continuation.

Judging from how "continuity" as we know it was derailed 2 decades ago, along with characterizations, that's awfully hard to believe. It's not so much a "continuation" as it is a sorry farce, laced with divisive leftist politics and social justice pandering. But nobody in the MSM will admit it.

So, this new “Avengers” No. 1 is steeped in the team’s nearly 60-year history but marks the start of a new creative team and new membership lineup: Captain Marvel, leader, Thor, Iron-Man, the Sam Wilson Captain America, the Scarlet Witch, Black Panther and the Vision.

Captain Marvel picks her team carefully. Not only for their powers but what they will represent to the public.

For example, she asks Sam Wilson to join as Captain America rather than Steve Rogers because she wants his skills but also his common touch. She already has a thunder god and a king on the team so she doesn’t need the larger-than-life, man-from-another-time Steve Rogers. MacKay’s writing is strong, combining insight, humor, knowledge of the characters’ histories and a sense of adventure into the story. Villa knows how to illustrate both epic and personal moments – a winning combination for a book like “The Avengers.”

Now why must Sam join as Cap instead of as Falcon? This is a bald-faced political statement, and perpetuates the poor use of Falcon in the past decade, all written at Steve's expense, and what the columnist says about Steve implies he's "outmoded". Even though, from the time Stan Lee revived Cap in 1964 until 2002, Steve readjusted to modern times, and kept on his crimefighting career, and often serving as Avengers chairman, though he did enable other members to serve as leader too, which was an important advantage in storytelling possibilities. Now, some media hack is stealthily telling us Rogers is outdated because he's "from another time"? All that does is perpetuate the insulting lectures. Wilson, let us be clear, would work quite fine as Falcon, and be more his own agency. Instead, they shoehorn him into an exaggerated diversity checkbox position that only amounts to caring more about the costume than the character in the end.

Fan response to a new “Avengers” No. 1 has been critical and sarcastic and sadly appropriate. As noted, it seems like the team is revamped on a regular basis, or a new off-shoot of the Avengers is introduced. There were so many side-Avengers books during Jason Aaron’s run that even if a reader never missed an issue of “The Avengers,” he may have felt lost issue to issue.

That said, the response is appropriate to the announcement; however, anyone giving this first issue a chance should be easily swept away by the enthusiasm of the creative team and the characters. While readers may be jaded, MacKay, Villa and colorist Blee are not. They are excited to be here and that excitement feels contagious.

This looks like an “Avengers” that may be both fun and impactful again.

Well this sure sounds laughably backhanded. But what's confusing here is on what exact basis fans have a point. The most valid argument one could make here is the kind that I did - how Falcon continued to be forced into the role of Capt. America, instead of his own role as Falcon. What, Sam's original role isn't good enough? Based on which, if this is how they're going to go about, why must fans be excited? All they're doing is giving away how this'll likely be another divisive leftist political statement that offers nothing challenging to think about. And they wonder why readers are jaded?

We might as well also take a look at another puff piece from the same paper, about a Namor miniseries titled Conquered Shores, set in the far future:

Namor, the Sub-Mariner, finally gets his wish.

The surface world is mostly gone. Its inhabitants mostly lost to the waters that flooded the land years earlier.

But Namor, the king of Atlantis, has always been complicated, complex. He fought the “surface dwellers” and he fought alongside the surface dwellers. He’s been hero and villain.

Today's people in charge of Marvel, however, are little more than villains. And while prince Namor may have once been well written as a complex character, that's changed ever since Joe Quesada sent Marvel down the path to destruction.

Writer Christopher Cantwell and artist Pasqual Ferry look about a century into the future to a water world where most humans are gone, even fewer super-powered beings survive and Atlanteans are supreme.

While “Conquered Shores” looks to the future, it is in many ways a salute to Marvel Comics’ origins. Namor was created before Marvel Comics was called Marvel Comics.

Oh, please. This, a tribute? A salute? Hardly. It's only yet more tired "statements" that're meaningless.

So was Captain America. So was the original Human Torch. They are the foundations of what would become Marvel Comics. All three of these characters are among the surviving super-powered beings in “Conquered Shores.”

Let me guess. This story will tell us that, much like Cap survived frozen in an iceberg of suspended animation, it happened again? As for an android, it figures Jim Hammond could survive if he's got the right maintenance. But without good morale and dedication, Marvel's got none of that today.

And while “Conquered Shores” is a mini-series, there is enough of an open-ending where the storyline could be visited again in the future.

One I won't be looking forward to, if it's as PC as anything Marvel's releasing now could turn out to be, and chances of that are pretty high. If anything, you cannot expect comics turned out under such terrible editors and publishers as C.B. Cebulski to amount to much of anything. Because the corporate influence has taken its toll, as leaderships got worse and worse. Now, we're seeing the sad results.

Labels: Avengers, bad editors, Captain America, dreadful writers, marvel comics, msm propaganda, women of marvel