The Four Color Media Monitor

A writer at Popverse claims he was encouraged to read more modern mainstream because of Marvel's "War of the Realms" crossover that Jason Aaron, one of the wokest writers in modern comicdom, was involved in producing. And, he belittles the complaints of the traditional fanbase that was driven away:

Today, the spectral form hovering above every conversation about the current state of the comic book industry is the amorphous group called 'new readers.' These 'new readers' are used to drive a wedge between Western comic book readership (which, in many conversations I've observed, tends to get flattened down to superhero books from Marvel and DC) and the popularity of manga, manhua, and manhwa from East Asia. The cynical narrative goes that the history of in-universe continuity reboots in both Marvel and DC Comics has driven away 'new readers,' who are reportedly too intimidated to take the plunge.

Ahem. It's not just that now routine reboots are dispiriting. It's also that moral and common sense were thrown away, and only so many characters from both universes had their personalities turned inside out for no good reason. All this, along with the very events the writer is sugarcoating, are what discouraged fandom from continuing, and he has the gall to call it "cynical", but not the writing of woke scribes like Aaron.

Suffice to say, I've never really agreed with this narrative, and I have writer Jason Aaron to thank for that. At Fan Expo Canada 2025, Aaron talked about the approach he takes as a writer to ensure that his books remain both exciting to returning comic book fans while "accessible" to newbies.

"I want every book I write to be accessible to somebody who's never read this character before, whether that's when I was doing Thor, doing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," says Aaron. "For me as a writer, you always have to show your work. I can't expect that any of you kind of show up to the party already invested in these characters... When I'm writing the book, I have to think of it as you've been stuck in a bunker for 40 years, and you've never heard of these characters before, and you just came out and the first thing that happens is for some reason somebody hands you this first issue of this comic, you need to get everything to get you excited about these characters in the pages of that book."

When I heard Jason Aaron say this, my hackles were raised, because I have him to thank for how I got into present-day Marvel Comics. Without getting too bogged down in my origin story as a comic book reader, I was that reader who was stuck in a bunker for 40 years - and that bunker was Walt Simonson's run on Thor (as far as bunkers go, it was luxurious). It wasn't until I was a college student that I finally had the money to get into comics, so I bought an omnibus of Simonson's Thor with funds from a research fellowship I was in. I later branched out and got into G. Willow Wilson's Ms. Marvel and then Greg Pak and Frank Cho's Totally Awesome Hulk, but I didn't go much further than that. I was overwhelmed by the state of contemporary Marvel Comics and the endless aisles of the white and red trade paperback dress that lined the shelves of Forbidden Planet - until I picked up War of the Realms by Jason Aaron and Russell Dauterman in 2019.

Wow, one of the biggest advocates of social justice pandering is who convinced him to read Marvel's modern output? Well, it's really no shock at all. These modern news writers don't have what it takes to appreciate older stories, let alone encourage audiences to buy and read them to see what stands or falls on its own merits, and figure out how to develop stories in a modern context that can actually resonate. Interesting he also considered other social justice advocates like Wilson and Pak scribes whose works were worth reading, but not figures like Mike Baron or Chuck Dixon, or even liberals who were blacklisted by the Big Two because they weren't considered PC enough, like Larry Hama. I'm sure the citation of such writers and artists as Aaron, Wilson and Pak was no accident. It's insulting to say Simonson's Thor run is the equivalent of being "stuck in a bunker" if it's entertaining, and how is sticking with leftist PC nonsense of modern times not being "stuck in a bunker"?

Another odd thing about this puff piece is that it almost sounds like Thor was the only Marvel comic he ever read years ago. It's enough to wonder if he really is a Marvel fan, or he'd be chatting about how even early Golden Age output was far better than what we see today. He continues:

Marvel's War of the Realms was a perfect introduction for me to the larger Marvel Universe

At the time, War of the Realms was Marvel's most recent company-wide event, and I had been following Marvel's promotion of the event on social media closely because I could tell that it was a Thor-centric event. I saw the cover for War of th[e] Realms #3 and noticed that Spider-Man was wearing what appeared to be a winter hat while hiding from Frost Giants with Luke Cage, Captain America, Iron Fist, and Wolverine, and that won me over. Why did Spider-Man have a hat on his head? Is Thor going to be okay? Can he let Luke Cage keep Mjolnir, please?

Oh for heaven's sake, this is just so dumb, right down to how every other character is depicted lifting the Uru hammer as much as Thor himself. And despite any attempt the columnist might make to sound like the contrary, it doesn't actually focus convincingly on story merit.

War of the Realms was my ticket back to present-day Marvel, and I devoured the trade paperback in one sitting on the bus in Los Angeles. Obviously, I was a big fan of Thor, and the fact that War of the Realms featured Malekith as the villain was a perfect jumping-on point for me from Simonson's Thor. Dauterman drew Malekith with the type of enthusiasm that the character deserves (is Malekith the reason why I always play as a drow in Dungeons & Dragons? More on this at 10). I didn't know all the characters in the story, but that was okay - the action was so exciting that I was motivated to learn more about who they were.

Please, do tell us about it. Somehow, it's hard to believe one could actually read a whole trade collection that easily on a bus too without getting carsick. In any case, if he only got into the crossover because Malekith the Dark Elf was featured, I'm sorry, but that's not a reason. Yet at the same time, I think he's exaggerating the action factor deliberately, and again, he's given clues this is about anything but merit.

Even though I hadn't yet read Aaron's run on Thor that led up to War of the Realms, it was easy for me to immerse myself in the story because the premise is simple: Malekith wants to make everything cold. He always does! Then there were jaw-dropping moments peppered in the event, like Daredevil wielding Heimdall's sword and becoming the God Without Fear, that had me hooked. I got the sense that if War of the Realms was only the tip of the iceberg for this era of Marvel Comics, then there was plenty of stuff for me to enjoy.

This too is hopelessly silly. If all he really cared about was seeing other heroes besides Thor brandish weapons belonging to the Norse deities, then it sounds awfully superficial, and any discussion of merit becomes all the more ambiguous. Most of what he brings up are just cheap attempts to have every possible character take on certain "characteristics" of other Marvel cast members, and these alone don't add up to anything meaningful. Even Spider-Man's black symbiote costume during Secret Wars had more meaning than this.

And then the rest is history. I jumped into the Krakoan era of X-Men comics, ascended into a realm of my own from Chip Zdarsky and Marco Checchetto's Daredevil run, and became obsessed with this character called Swordmaster while fully knowing that I was probably the only Swordmaster fan in America. And look where we are now: Lin Lie is the face of Iron Fist for a new generation of Marvel fans.

Thank you, Jason Aaron and Russell Dauterman, for freeing me from my bunker.

I guess he has no thanks to offer to independent creators by contrast. There's a lot of these phonies who can only seem to get as far as the mainstream, and never give the independents any love. And how about that, he even considers a diversity pandering replacement for Danny Rand a big deal. That says all you need to know right there what he really thinks of the creations of more talented veterans like Roy Thomas. Though Rand may still be around, the way they're handling him now is no improvement. It's also laughable how the writers keep resorting to alliterative names for new characters. Just because Stan Lee made use of the idea doesn't make their employment of it as good. Mainly because Lee made his stories more entertaining than theirs will ever be. And I've got a feeling the columnist wouldn't be interested or impressed if there were romantic tales explored in these stories, old or new.

In the end, it only sounds like another attempt to sugarcoat how awful mainstream superhero fare become in the past 2 decades, and the continued fluff-coating of modern comicdom is all that's gone wrong with how it's spoken about. The obsession with forced politics in these stories is another awful mistake that was made. If they're not willing to write nice long essays about older items and why they matter more, they definitely fail to convince they're actually Marvel/DC fans.

Labels: bad editors, conventions, crossoverloading, dreadful artists, golden calf of villainy, history, marvel comics, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, Thor