When I wrote to you about this earlier, I mentioned the oddness of JMS being one of the few writers I know to be "occasionally brilliant," but perhaps when he's on, he's less "brilliant" and more just plain solid. That, in itself, is damn uncommon in superhero comics. So often, we find the greatness in single scenes, in character moments, in particularly powerful arcs, but rarely ever are they truly good solid stories.
I think it's the solid stories that truly become the classics, the ones reprinted in compilations and discussed nostalgically for years to come. It's something that I fear superhero comics have lost sight of since the Bronze Age ended with Crisis, since now everything is all about events and creator runs and soap opera rather than just trying to tell good, solid stories. I'd love to see more Alan Brennerts out there, y'know?
Forgive the rambling. You always seem to get my brain going when it comes to classic comics.
I really do miss the bronze age. I was thinking how often comics really have become about heroes just fighting villains ( and gabbing while they do so). NOT, heroes stopping well thought out plots....but just fighting (or fighting themselves over and over...). The soap opera mentality is kind of what kept me away from X-Men in the eighties
( ... )
I don't really mind soap operatics so long as it's rooted in telling good stories about the characters that don't bog down the plot or action in the process. Over at DC, it seems like there's far too LITTLE of that stuff (where it's mainly just beating up villains), and at Marvel, where there's too damn much (heroes spend more time fighting each other). Brennert understood the balance of this better than most, with every one of his stories focusing on superhero angst in ways that furthered the story and gave the characters development by the end.
So Molokai is good? I shouldn't be surprised, but I had a hard time getting into it. It seemed a bit too much like something out of my Mom's book club, y'know? But if it's that good, I will absolutely give it another chance. Are you going to read Honolulu next?
Both these stories also make their adversaries (Two-Face and Scarecrow) SMART (and quite difficult to deal with).Totally! And hey, not that this has to do with smart villains, but I just realized that both of those stories were
( ... )
I don't mind soap operatics either, as long as they involve genuine character motivation, challenge and growth that are organic to the people and the plot (like say, Gar going after the brotherhood of evil for the murder of the Doom Patrol, or Kory's space showdown with her sister...a LONG simmering plot line.... Notice how I even called the characters by their names instead of the hero codes, because that's how I thought of them
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I think it's the solid stories that truly become the classics, the ones reprinted in compilations and discussed nostalgically for years to come. It's something that I fear superhero comics have lost sight of since the Bronze Age ended with Crisis, since now everything is all about events and creator runs and
soap opera rather than just trying to tell good, solid stories. I'd love to see
more Alan Brennerts out there, y'know?
Forgive the rambling. You always seem to get my brain going when it comes to
classic comics.
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Reply
So Molokai is good? I shouldn't be surprised, but I had a hard time getting into it. It seemed a bit too much like something out of my Mom's book club, y'know? But if it's that good, I will absolutely give it another chance. Are you going to read Honolulu next?
Both these stories also make their adversaries (Two-Face and Scarecrow) SMART (and quite difficult to deal with).Totally! And hey, not that this has to do with smart villains, but I just realized that both of those stories were ( ... )
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